A Black woman was ticketed with a $385 fine because she talked too loudly on her cell phone. On Thursday, Diamond Robinson was having a conversation on her phone in her Eastpointe, Michigan neighborhood. As she walked up and down her block, a neighbor who recently moved to the area asked her to lower her voice or end the call. Robinson responded by telling the person to “get out of my face” and proceeded with her phone call. The neighboring resident called the police.
Responding officers arrived shortly after they received the call. Robinson told them that she was documenting the entire encounter on Facebook Live.
“And I hope you know this is all being recorded,” she said. “I’m not doing anything wrong by walking up and down the street, talking on my phone.”
While Robinson recorded, officers issued her a $385 ticket for public nuisance. She believes she was ticketed because she was Black.
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“You can’t tell me that I’m not being harassed because baby I am…,” she said. “I’ve been living in Eastpointe for five years, and I know what public nuisance is…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.”
The neighbor refused to comment on the situation, and the officers say Robinson will have her day in court. She has since installed security cameras outside of her home and is preparing for the upcoming court date to contest the citation.
“A lot of these things are being pushed under the rug, and they don’t need to,” Robinson told Fox 2 Detroit. “We can sit here all day, and we can chant, we can riot, and we can do all of those things. That is not going to make a change if you don’t speak up at that time, at that moment.”
