Woman, aka Doorstep Debbie, calls cops on Hispanic man trying to enter NYC apartment building to visit aunt with his two kids
A Hispanic man who was visiting his aunt at her New York apartment with his two young children was harassed by a white woman who kept insisting that he was lying and called the cops on him.
Alfredo Sandoval was outside his aunt's East Village apartment this past Sunday, November 17, with his two children, aged six and nine, when the unidentified woman came up to them and started questioning them, according to the Daily Mail.
She tried to stop him from going inside and asked him what the name of his aunt was, telling him she didn't want to take any risks as there had been many thefts in the building in recent times.
Angered that he was being racially profiled, Sandoval took out his camera and started filming the woman as she called 911 and tried to report him. "You're lying," the woman can be heard saying in one video. "Who is your aunt?"
When Sandoval says his aunt lives on the second floor and has stayed in the building for 60 years, she responds, "She lives on the second floor? I doubt it. I know everyone in the building. There's been a lot of theft in the building. There have been thieves."
He accuses her of being racist, something she brushes off. "This isn't racist," she says. "I ask everyone who they are. You know nothing because your pride has kept you away from life... and now you're putting it into your children."
At one point, Sandoval's children innocently ask the woman if she's interrogating them because she's the building manager. She answers, "It doesn't make a difference, honey. I live here."
Sandoval quickly tells them in Spanish to not talk to the woman, who once again accuses him of lying and tells him he's not there to visit any family before taunting him for filming her.
"You're not visiting family. Your family doesn't live here," she tells him. "Go ahead and put (the video) on YouTube. Your name is going to be smeared all over."
Tired of the woman, Sandoval said he eventually made his way into the apartment only to find himself once again followed by her. However, when he got to the second floor, he found that his aunt wasn't at home.
"I exercised patience in a situation that was not deserving," Sandoval wrote in an Instagram post that has since been deleted. "I issued tolerance in the face of evil and I gave respect when it was not offered to me or my children."
"This is not America or American," he continued. "This behavior is deep-seeded hatred and intolerance towards people of color and Latinos. I post this video because my children had to bear witness of this hate."
He said his children were traumatized because of the ordeal and that he is getting legal advice.