Black Woman Receives $385 Fine for Talking on Phone, Says It's Due to Her Race

A Michigan woman who was fined $385 for talking too loudly on her cellphone outside her house believes she was unfairly discriminated against because of her race.

Diamond Robinson, who is Black, was walking up and down her road—Cushing Street in Eastpointe—around midday on Thursday and talking on her phone. Robinson said one of her neighbors approached her with a large German shepherd dog.

The woman asked her to get off her phone or speak more quietly.

Robinson told the neighbor to "get out of my face" and continued her phone conversation, reported Fox2 Detroit. She told the news channel that three minutes later, police pulled up and Robinson started recording the incident via Facebook Live.

In the video, Robinson can be heard telling the neighbor that she was wasting taxpayers' money by calling the police.

"And I hope you know this is all being recorded," she is heard saying to the police officers.

The neighbor was a white woman who had recently moved to the area, Fox2 reported.

Robinson told the news channel that she believed she had been targeted because of her race.

"I'm not doing anything wrong by walking up and down the street talking on my phone," Robinson said in the video.

However, that did not stop officers handing her a $385 ticket for public nuisance.

"I get a ticket for being a public nuisance because I'm talking too loud on my phone," she said in the video. "That's why I got a ticket?"

"You can't tell me that I'm not being harassed, because baby I am … I've been living in Eastpointe for five years and I know what public nuisance is," Robinson added.

"There's no way police should be called on me when I am on my own property, in my own neighborhood, on my own block."

Robinson said she was upset about the incident and intends to take legal action to fight the ticket. She told Fox2 she was also planning to have security cameras installed outside her home.

She said she felt she had no choice but to broadcast the incident on Facebook.

"A lot of these things are being pushed under the rug and they don't need to," she said. "We can sit here all day and we can chant, we can riot, and we can do all of those things. That is not going to make a change if you don't speak up at that time, at that moment."

Addressing the neighbor who called the police, Robinson said: "Leave me alone, what's going on, are you upset? What did I do to you?"

The neighbor declined to comment when Fox2 tried to speak to her.

Newsweek has contacted Robinson and Eastpointe Police for further comment.