MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Mud Island woman says she and her boyfriend were discriminated against by her apartment’s management because they’re black.
Camry Porter recorded parts of the incident on her cell phone Wednesday at the Riverset Apartments, and it has already been shared nearly 7,000 times.
She says she and her boyfriend took her godchildren to spend the Fourth of July at the pool when one of the managers called police because he was wearing socks in the water.
“I think she’s calling the police because he has on socks,” Porter says in one of the videos. “She’s walking off making a phone call to whoever she needs to call. I haven’t said anything crazy to her, but I did tell her I was not going to leave.”
[protected-iframe id=”174505aa313edc9e9cb590e0ff49c278-29519520-12543204″ info=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3D2074935026051786%26id%3D100006059266288&width=500″ width=”500″ height=”776″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no”]
Porter tells WREG community manager Erica Walker told the couple he needed to either take off his socks or leave.
“And she was like, ‘Well, I’m the property manager,’ and she pointed at the rules. The rules say, ‘Proper pool attire.’ It doesn’t specify what proper pool attire is,” Porter said.
She says before she started recording, Walker told her hats were included on the list of prohibited pool attire, but several other white men were wearing hats and another was wearing basketball shorts.
“So, she basically said no hats, no shirts, no socks,” Porter said in one of the cell phone videos as she panned around the pool. “We have two men, who are her friends, sitting right here in hats. Two hats. We have a man over here sitting in a hat.”
In the second video, the two women disagree about what was said before the camera started rolling, but Walker tells Porter the problem is that her boyfriend was putting his socks in the water.
“You asked me if you could wear a hat out here,” Walker said. “I said, ‘Yes, as long as you’re not dunking it in the water.'”
But Porter believes she and her boyfriend were singled out because of their skin color.
“It does look funny,” she said. “It’s 25, 30-plus white people out here and you haven’t said anything — you’re partying with them. You’re partying with them! But when we come, it’s an issue.”
Now, she wants Walker to be held accountable.
“You called the police on me. That could have went a whole other way. We’ve seen that,” Porter said. “And I didn’t have anything to say to her. She was very apologetic, I will say that. But at this point, I don’t want an apology. You’ve embarrassed me.”
In a statement Thursday, Trilogy Real Estate Group confirmed it is investigating the incident, saying:
“Riverset Apartments takes Ms. Porter’s allegations very seriously. We do not support discrimination of any kind.”
By 5 p.m., three hours after the story posted on WREG.com, the company sent another message stating the manager in the video had been fired.
“After assessing statements from Ms. Porter and determining that this former employee’s actions violate our company’s policies & beliefs, she is no longer employed by Riverset Apartments.”
