Kells Fyffe-Marshall, a film directed, posted to Facebook about the incident.
Four people were packing their bags and locking up the house before leaving when they were surrounded by seven Rialto police cop cars.
Three of the people were black.
“The officers came out of their cars demanding us to put our hands in the air,” she wrote.
“They informed us that there was also a helicopter tracking us.”
Fyffe-Marshall describe the scene as officers convened on the vacationers.
“They locked down the neighborhood and had us standing in the street. Why?”
“A neighbour across the street saw 3 black people packing luggage into their car and assumed we were stealing from the house. She then called the police. ”
At first, the group joked about the misunderstanding.
The group tried to explain what they were doing.
But the supervisor said he didn’t know what Airbnb was.
“He insisted that we were lying about it and said we had to prove it,” Fyfe-Marshall posted to her Facebook page.
Fyfe-Marshall said it was no longer funny after Rialto police continued questioning the group’s intentions.
“We showed them the booking confirmations and phoned the landlord… because they didn’t know what she looked like on the other end to confirm it was her.. they detained us – because they were investigating a felony charge – for 45 minutes while they figured it out.
We have been dealing with different emotions and you want to laugh about this but it’s not funny. The trauma is real. I’ve been angry, fustrated and sad. I was later detained at the airport. This is insanity.
The cops admit that the woman’s reason for calling the police was because we didn’t WAVE to her as she looked at us putting our luggage into our car from her lawn. ”
Eventually, the group was free to go.
No reports have surfaced about whether or not anyone in the group will file a civil rights lawsuit for the detainment.
