Hotel Calls Cops on 'Trespassing' Black Guest

He says guard confronted him in lobby
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 27, 2018 7:11 AM CST
Hotel Calls Cops on 'Trespassing' Black Guest
The DoubleTree Hotel in Portland says it has "reached out" to Massey.   (Wikimedia Commons/Billy Hathorn)

In what the hotel's manager is calling a "misunderstanding," a black guest was kicked out of a hotel in Portland, Ore., after a security guard confronted him in the lobby. In a series of Instagram posts, Jermaine Massey says he sat down in a quiet area of the DoubleTree Hotel after a concert Sunday night to take a phone call from his mother, the Oregonian reports. He says he was interrupted by "Earl," a white security guard who asked if he was a guest and demanded to know his room number. Massey, 34, says he told the guard he was on the phone and couldn't remember the number off the top of his head. The guard then had a manager call police, saying Massey was trespassing. Massey says white guests were not stopped and he believes he was singled out because he was black.

Massey—who says he had his room key in his hand while he spoke to Earl—says in one post that after police arrived, they told him the "hotel requested me to leave, that if I didn’t I would be considered a trespasser and would be thrown in jail." Massey, a resident of Kent, Wash., who was visiting Portland for the first time, ended up taking a room at the Sheraton. "It just goes to show you that racism is still alive and well," he said. "This was a real incident where I could’ve gone to jail if I responded in a different way." DoubleTree general manager Paul Peralta tells KOIN the hotel has reached out to Massey to resolve the "unfortunate" incident. (A black lawmaker had the police called on her while canvassing in the Portland area.)

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