‘You Don’t Belong Here’: Son Charged With Assault After Mom Calls Cops On Black Worker

A man accused of racial­ly pro­fil­ing a Black work­er in a Tennessee park­ing garage with his white mom has been charged with assault after a video of the alter­ca­tion went viral on social media, the Nashville Metro police said.

According to an arrest war­rant filed Dec. 2, Edward Brennan took a swing at Johnny Martinez, who was check­ing cars for park­ing per­mits in the Nashville garage, after his mom called the police because Martinez refused to show them iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. “A rea­son­able per­son would regard the con­tact as extreme­ly offen­sive or provoca­tive,” caus­ing Martinez to fear “immi­nent bod­i­ly injury, the war­rant states.

Martinez told The Daily Beast that he was work­ing in the River House apart­ment building’s park­ing garage on the evening of Nov. 27, when he saw the white moth­er and son mon­i­tor­ing him.

“As I was doing my rounds…I noticed peo­ple watch­ing me,” he explained.

As he con­tin­ued to work, Martinez said he tried to avoid the pair until the moth­er alleged­ly told him, “You don’t belong here. How did you get here?”

In a video orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on YouTube, Martinez can be seen film­ing the moth­er and son as they ques­tion him. Brennan tells Martinez that he will call the police, and the moth­er — iden­ti­fied as “Bitsy” — asks for Martinez’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Brennan then walks toward a car off-cam­era while the moth­er con­tin­ues pes­ter­ing Martinez.

When the son comes back on cam­era, he strikes Martinez, knock­ing a bot­tle open­er off his key­chain. Martinez told The Daily Beast that when he went to pick it up, Brennan alleged­ly tried to attack him again.

“When he attacked me, he swung, he almost hit me in the face,” Martinez said. “He broke this bot­tle open­er off of my keys. When I went to go pick it up, he lunged.”

Martinez said that he wait­ed for the police to show up, but the mom and son left. When reached for com­ment, Edward Brennan hung up on The Daily Beast.

Martinez explained that he worked for a boot­ing com­pa­ny that has hun­dreds of con­tracts with prop­er­ties across Nashville. His job was to make sure that vehi­cles at those prop­er­ties had per­mits to park at those locations.

“If they didn’t have a per­mit, we would immo­bi­lize the vehi­cle. We would put a boot on it,” he said.

He explained that he thinks it’s nor­mal for peo­ple to be curi­ous about what he’s doing while check­ing cars. But with his large head­lamp, knee pads, and lan­yard, he should appear offi­cial enough for peo­ple to believe he’s working.

River House apart­ments declined to com­ment on the matter.

Martinez said that he was more shocked than any­thing about the inci­dent, which left him feel­ing anx­ious days later.

“I felt like crap,” he said. “I thought I was going to have a typ­i­cal Karen moment.”
(This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the dailybeast)