Sunday afternoon we were tagged in a video that claimed Rialto Police Department racially profiled and harassed a group of young adults as they left an Air B&B in North Rialto. Donisha Prendergast, and granddaughter of singer / song writer Bob Marley, Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan and Kelly Fyffee Marshall were all detained as Rialto Police officers conducted an investigation that a neighbor of the Air B&B they were staying at called in suspicious activity.
“On Monday April 30, 2018, at 1236 PM, Rialto Police officers were dispatched to a call from a reporting party advising of a possible in progress residential burglary at a residence in the 2600 Block of West Loma Vista Dr., Rialto, CA. The reporting party identified several people taking suitcases from the residence and loading into a vehicle that was backed into the driveway. The reporting party did not recognize the vehicle or the people as neighbors, or the homeowner.” According to a Rialto Police Department Press Release.
On Instagram Donisha Prendergast claims that she “Got surrounded by the police for being black in a white neighbourhood.” Funny our favorite person to quote in these types of situations is Luis Nolasco the racist ACLU employee that says white people are non existant! Mrs Prendergast also remarks that “I’m sad and irritated to see that fear is still the first place police officers go in their pursuit to serve and protect, to the point that protocol supersedes their ability to have discernment.”
What Mrs Prendergast may not know is that in most cases people who are detained and in a large group are asked to sit down on the curb, ankles crossed and not walking around filming a traffic stop. Rialto Police showed mountains of resttraint in the fact that not one person was ever placed into handcuffs another thing that is done when people are being detained.
Even the homeowner who rented to the group says that the whole situation is being blown up. Also the neighbor said that when she saw 4 young people loading a car in a hurried manner that she didn’t recognize she was uncertain. Then she smiled and waved and got no response so she called police. This is the very thing that Rialto Police and Police across the nation are telling people what to do when they see something to say something.
Another big problem is that there are requirements that people renting out facilities in Rialto even Air B&B need to have a permit. If this permit was obtained then the police would have verified the fact that these people were renting.
rialtonow 
May 09, 2018 @ 03:42:47
Yes this is a clear case of profiling. Anyone of color understands it and has had it happen to them at least once. The profiling began with the neighbor and it cascaded from there.
I am sad to say that this type of profiling is still very prevalent in our society.
May 09, 2018 @ 03:44:05
You think the police were profiling?
May 11, 2018 @ 03:02:38
I think the profiling was initiated by the neighbor and then when she called the police she instigated the profiling which was then validated inadvertently by the police actions.
May 12, 2018 @ 22:05:40
The police weren’t profiling. The neighbor was profiling. It was the neighbor’s fault. The police were just doing their job and were fine. Now if they pulled their guns and ordered them on the ground and yelled at them and told them to “stop resisting,” as many of them so often do, then that would be another story. I’m looking at the victims here and wondering, how would any rational and open-minded person see a few well-dressed black people exiting a residence, suitcases in hand and loading them into a car, and get the impression they were burglarizing the home? I’ll tell you how: It’s because the person who called the cops is a flat-out racist, plain and simple. And the racist turd who called the cops obviously doesn’t even know their neighbor, otherwise they’d likely know they were using it as an Airbnb. The neighbor’s first impression upon seeing a group of well-dressed black folks loading suitcases into a nice vehicle wasn’t that they were possibly guests at the residence (which would have taken all but a few seconds to approach them and just ask, but hey, they’re black and they be too scary to approach, right?). So, the neighbor calls the cops. Paranoid, racist idiot! And the operator of this blog clearly shows his own racist colors by looking at this situation and not seeing anything wrong. My questions is: Why the hell are all these racist cracker assholes living in San Bernardino County? Property is cheap in Arkansas and Alabama, and the trash haulers and factories are always looking to hire.
May 13, 2018 @ 17:35:21
The neighbor profiled. So this poorly done article seems to expose the “climate” in Rialto which after hearing the home owner, the police chief, and the mayor seems to be totally blind and tone def.
The homeowner and her attempt to throw her “customers” under the boss by calling them rude and ill-mannered conjures up negative stereotype and racial code that blacks have an attitude problem, this seemed purposely done , since she was not at the encounter she did not know how her “customers” acted. yet she threw these words out there to diminish their claims and to “rile” up those negative stereotypes.
lastly the police, whether it was over policing or racial. Detained the group way too long and also the show of force is not indicative of the nature of what the assumed crime was. 7 cars and a helicopter? You surround the vehicles the occupants get out cool, calm, and collected. You see luggage, they explain the app AirBnB and probalby showed you the contract. The stop should have ended right there. No crime had been committed. Why were these people detained for over 20 minutes and why did a seargent need to come on the scene and try to criminalize them by calling them liars?
That’s the issue with this whole charage. Shame on Rialto now for writing this story, I have yet to see any incident like this happening to white people with the same show of force, detainment, and subsequent bad mouthing.
May 14, 2018 @ 00:43:19
I will agree with one point in the comment that the homeowner seemed to turn on her renters when the cameras were turned on her she used it to harm people. There was no need for the Air BnB homeowner to be at this press conference. The police did their jobs just like they have before.
Jan 13, 2019 @ 12:12:59
Jusrt goes to show you how far racism has gone in America since Trump took over. The rednecks are out of the closet. The sad part is that we have so many young racists, millennials. What a shame. Not to mention they don’t even read the newspaper or watch the news. They are too busy on social media. Anybody who says that is not racial profiling is either stupid or lying. That would never happen to a white person leaving a house whose only crime was that they didn’t wave back. Give me a break. We got a whole new breed of uneducated and uninformed racists in America.