A Decatur resident may feel remorse after calling the cops on black men who turned out to be Airbnb customers.
D.C.-based rapper Stefan Grant, also known as STEFisDOPE, and four guests were renting a house in Decatur while attending the A3C Festival in Old Fourth Ward this weekend. But the guests may have been more impressed by the interior decorating than by their neighbors.
The rapper and his friends were getting comfortable when they were joined by two more surprising visitors. According to the rapper, two police officers showed up on a tip that robbers had broken into the house.
"Our eyes all got huge — we were like, 'No, this is an Airbnb! The owner knows we're here, we've been in contact with her!' " Grant said to Slate in an interview.
Grant told Slate he wasn't surprised, that they were "black kids in this 'Leave It to Beaver' neighborhood." But he said he didn't allow the encounter bring him down.
Instead of getting upset, he ended up posting this selfie with the officers to Twitter, and it went viral.
Major S.R. Fore, a DeKalb County police spokesman, confirmed the incident in an email to the AJC. "One of the neighbors was not aware the home had been rented out for the weekend. They saw several people in the home and called police to report a possible burglary in progress," he said.
"Officers arrived on the scene and located the party in the backyard of the home. The officers explained why there were there and were shown proof of rental as well as keys to the residence," Fore said. "Everyone was very cooperative and once their occupancy was verified the officers went back in service."
Grant thought it was over, but it wasn't. After the police arrived, a neighbor approached the residence himself.
The rapper left Atlanta Friday night and is back in the nation's capital, but he wanted to let everyone know he's going to be alright.
He also retweeted messages of support from other Twitter users. One tweet he retweeted pointed out that things could have turned out quite differently for the young black men.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Saturday, Grant said, "Profiling is a thing," but the neighbors didn't know what was going on. The worst thing he could have done at the time was get mad and escalate the situations, he said.
"Stay positive, do cool stuff, do creative things," he said.
The music producer has strong ties to Atlanta. His fiancée attended Spelman College and he sometimes collaborates with artists in the area.
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