“Apartment Patty” Loses Her Job Less Than 24 Hours After Blocking Her Black Neighbor from Entering Their Building
The online public-shaming cycle has become ruthlessly efficient in the past year. White people trying to police the banal, everyday behavior of black people are finding there's a vanishingly small amount of time between calling the cops and getting turned into a meme.
The latest case came to a resolution in less than 72 hours. On Saturday, D'Arreion Toles posted a video he took when he returned to his apartment complex after staying late at work. A white woman walking her dog blocked his path and repeatedly demanded that he show her his keys or tell her his apartment number, to which he responds that he's not obligated to show or tell her anything to enter his own home.
At one point she starts, "If you want to come into my building—"
"It’s not your building," he interrupts. "You’re not the owner."
The woman has since been identified as Hilary Mueller, but not until she earned the hashtag "Apartment Patty." After Toles pushed past her into the building, she followed him on the elevator, saying she wanted to know who he was visiting. When he repeated that he was a resident, she then said she just wanted to introduce herself as a neighbor, and followed him to his door demanding he tell her his name. By Sunday, Mueller's employer, real estate management company Tribeca-STL, announced that she'd been fired.
What's most remarkable about the encounter is that Mueller proceeded to call the police after seeing Toles unlock and walk into his apartment. About 30 minutes after the last video, Toles reported that officers showed up at his door saying they had gotten a complaint that he made another resident "uncomfortable." It's a shockingly petty attempt by Mueller to recast herself as the victim of the encounter—what, exactly, are the police supposed to do to make her feel more comfortable when harassing her neighbor? It's also dangerously reckless considering how common stories are about police encounters escalating to violence. And it's certainly seems like the opposite of being a good neighbor.
