Diamond Robinson Eastpointe Michigan woman fined $385 for speaking loudly on phone claims she was racially targeted. But was she?
Sometimes good manners go a long way. A black Michigan woman fined $385 for talking ‘too loudly’ on her phone has spoken out, saying she was only fined as a result of her race.
Diamond Robinson was walking up and down her block on Cushing Street in Eastpointe Thursday, when a ‘white’ neighbor approached her asking, ‘Do you think that you can get off your phone or talk lower?’ WJBK reported.
‘One of those things she said,’ Robinson told the outlet. ‘And I said, ‘Get out of my face,’ and I proceeded to walk past her. She is saying whatever she is saying. Three minutes later, Eastpointe police pulls up.’
Robinson said she began streaming the ensuing police interaction on Facebook Live.
‘And I hope you know this is all being recorded,’ she told the officers in the video.
Targeted cause she was black?
As Robinson recorded, authorities wrote her the ticket.
‘I get a ticket for being a public nuisance because I’m talking too loud on my phone,’ she said in the video. ‘That’s why I got a ticket?’
Robinson told the local outlet she plans to fight the ticket and is now having security cameras installed outside her home.
‘There’s no way police should be called on me when I am on my own property, in my own neighborhood, on my own block,’ she said.
Robinson has since claimed that she was targeted because she is black.
The white woman who called the police had just moved to the neighborhood a couple weeks ago.
She said she felt broadcasting what happened on Facebook Live was her only choice.
Public nuisance?
‘A lot of these things are being pushed under the rug and they don’t need to,’ she said. ‘We can sit here all day and we can chant, we can riot, and we can do all of those things [but] that is not going to make a change if you don’t speak up at that time, at that moment.’
Robinson said she’d like to tell the 911 caller to leave her alone.
‘What’s going on, are you upset?’ she said. ‘What did I do to you?’
That neighbor declined to comment to the local outlet, besides to say that the fine ‘speaks for itself.’
Which is to wonder, would Robinson still be accusing her ‘white’ neighbor of racism had the woman herself being black, or any other race who felt compelled to call police on account of ‘noise pollution’?
When asked about the fine, a police officer told the station, ‘She will have her day in court.’
