A drunken NYPD officer in Tennessee got a slap on the wrist after he broke into a Black woman’s home, called her and her sons the N-word and threatened to hurt them. Despite the egregious nature of his offense, Michael J. Reynolds was only set to spend a couple of weeks in jail for terrorizing Conese Halliburton and her four sons in Nashville.
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As many horror stories start out nowadays, an Airbnb was involved. Reynolds was renting one for a friend’s bachelor party in September when, according to the Tennessean, he began “kicking in the front door of [Halliburton’s next door] 12 South-area home and charging in in the middle of the night. Video surveillance taken from a neighbor’s RING camera showed Reynolds screaming and threatening the family and using racial slurs.”
After the break-in, Halliburton said that her dogs tried to bite Reynolds but that he would not be deterred.
“He kept coming down the hall,” she said. “Nothing was holding him back. He was like, ‘This is my mother f—ing house’” before the surveillance footage showed Reynolds threatened them with racist, physical violence.
“Try to shoot me, and I’ll break every f—ing bone in your f—ing neck,” Reynolds said before calling them “fucking niggers.”
Reynolds was not arrested until days later even though Halliburton called 911 and police arrived after the NYPD cop’s illegal, racist and violent outburst.
Despite those facts, Reynolds was sentenced to just two weeks in jail and three years probation.
In classic and very privileged form, Reynolds tried to blame his racism and violence on the alcohol. The Tennessean reported that the cop testified that he thought Halliburton’s home was the house that he and his friends, several of whom are also NYPD cops, rented next door.
It was unclear what Reynolds’ current employment status was with the NYPD, but the Tennessean listed him as having “worked patrol in Manhattan” and wrote that “he was suspended for 30 days from his job, and although he had been decommissioned,” he was still employed as a police officer in New York City as of Dec. 6.
It was the latest collision of racism and an Airbnb. In a notorious instance, one Airbnb host called her Black male guests racist slurs in New York City.
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