Donisha Prendergast, a 33-year-old filmmaker and the Grand daughter of the iconic reggae artist Bob Marley and two of her friends were confused for thieves as they were getting ready to leave their Airbnb in Rialto, California. The trio was packing their luggage when a neighbor called the cops on them, telling officers that she saw “three black people stealing stuff.” The neighbor had reportedly waved at the group but they didn’t acknowledge her back, which led to her calling the police. Both Prendergast and Fyffe-Marshall posted a video of the incident on their social media.
“We were surrounded by 7 cop cars. The officers came out of their cars demanding us to put our hands in the air,” Fyffe-Marshall wrote. “They informed us that there was also a helicopter tracking us. They locked down the neighborhood and had us standing in the street.” The trio served the Rialto Police Department with notice of a pending lawsuit Monday in regards to the incident. However, the department believes responding officers acted professionally. “It was a very low-key contact,” Captain William Wilson of the Rialto Police Department said. “Nobody had their hands up in the air. There was no guns pointed. Nobody was put on the curb.”
The owner of the Airbnb the women stayed at said the situation could have been avoided had her guests used some common courtesy. “If the kids had simply smiled at (my neighbor) and waved back and acknowledged her and said, ‘We’re just Airbnb guests checking out,’ none of this would have ever happened,” she said. “But instead, they were rude, unkind, not polite.”
The guests plan to sue Rialto police over what they say was an excessive response to an alleged racially motivated 911 call.
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