A New Jersey mother is outraged after a neighbor called 911 on her daughter for spraying lanternflies in their neighborhood.
Monique Joseph says her daughter has been scared to leave the house after the incident. Joseph went to a city coucil meetinng to raise awareness to the incident.
“I’m not here to call him names and say he’s a racist. I’m not here to do that, but what I’m here to do is — I have to stand up for my children and for myself,” Joseph told Atlanta Black Star. “I have to do that. That was wrong.”
An older white man who called the police for the “suspicious Black woman” sprayed the ground in the Caldwell neighborhood once also sat on the same dais that Joseph aired her grievances to on Nov. 1.
“Racism, intentional or not, is still racism,” Joseph told the Caldwell City Council. Attorney for Gordon Lawshe told Atlanta Black Star his client’s reaction is being misconstrued.
The Caldwell Police Department says they got a call from Lawshe right before noon about a woman walking down his street. The girl he he notice was ia 9 years old her mother said.
“There’s a little Black woman walking and spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees,” Lawshe told the dispatcher. “I don’t know what the hell she is doing, but it’s scaring me though.”
