A Black man’s security camera captured the moment his white neighbor, armed with what appears to be a stun gun, told him to start acting “like a white person” during a dispute about his family’s dog.
Gerritt Jones told The San Francisco Chronicle that the confrontation occurred Monday outside his home in the gated Discovery Bay neighborhood.
He told the outlet that a white woman, identified as Adana Dean, reportedly came over to complain about the family’s dog, Dice.
At some point, Jones asked the woman to please leave his property. His security camera captured what happened next as the neighbor appears to make racist comments.
“We were raised around Black people — most of them were very nice,” Dean said, according to the footage.
“I don’t know if you’re just having a bad day or whatever, but today ain’t the day,” Jones told her.
“I’m not having a bad day,” she responded. “You know what, you’re a Black person in a white neighborhood and you’re acting like one. Why don’t you act like a white person in a white neighborhood?”
The family also recorded cellphone footage that showed the woman carrying what appears to be a stun gun.
Other members of the Jones family witnessed the altercation and heard Dean claiming that she had a “top-secret clearance.” She eventually left after threatening legal action.
The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office told the outlet that deputies responded to the home but concluded no crime had been committed. A report was filed about the dispute and the case will be referred to animal control.
Jones’s sister, Jariell Jones, posted the footage on Twitter where it quickly went viral. Various posts have racked up more than 1 million views as of Wednesday.
Jariell Jones told the newspaper that Dean had approached her nephew and the family’s 2-year-old pit bull. She reportedly pet the dog and described Dice as a good boy before leaving.
However, the family claimed she appeared on their doorstep minutes later to accuse Dice of attacking her dog. Her pet does not appear injured in the footage and video taken from another angle does not show any kind of violent altercation between the animals.
In a phone interview with The Chronicle, Dean claimed she had approached Gerritt Jones to ask whether his dog had been given a rabies shot. Dean said that, in her opinion, pit bulls could be dangerous so she wanted to know whether Jones’s dog was fully vaccinated.
She did not reiterate her accusation that Dice had attacked her poodle, as she did in the videos.
“The reason I went to them was because there was a dog in the street with a little boy — a little Black boy — so I knew whose it was,” she said.
She also denied carrying a stun gun, claiming the device in her hand was a bright light to chase dogs away.
“I am almost 80 years old,” Dean said. “I have worked most of my life. … There’s no racial discrimination here — absolutely none. I am completely aghast at what’s going on here.”
Dean’s husband, Peter Dean, also spoke with the newspaper and denied that his wife was racist. He said the couple both suffer with memory problems.
He went to repeat her claims, without evidence, that the videos were manipulated, saying, “I find it hard not to say that someone’s dreaming something up here.”
The Jones family spoke with NBC Bay Area about how the incident has affected them.
Jariell Jones said her family has always put in extra effort to be good neighbors.
“Be extra nice, say ‘yes, ma’am, yes, sir,’ which I feel is sick that we even have to feel that way,” she said. “But even though we were trying to be good Black people in their good white neighborhood, they still treated us this way.”
Zuyaire Jones, 13, said he wanted Dean to know that “we are not afraid to stand up for ourselves.”
“We have the right to walk our dogs, to ride our bikes. I feel like this goes for all the Black people that live in a white neighborhood,” the teenager said.