Former Obama Aide Supports 911 Hate Crime Bill

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN —The former Obama staffer whose New York neighbors called 911 when he tried to move into his new apartment has thrown his support behind a new proposal to make such false reports a hate crime.

Darren Martin — a former White House aide who was surrounded by police outside his new Upper West Side apartment, which neighbors said he was trying to rob, in May — said a proposed bill from state Senator Jesse Hamilton would have prevented a situation that might have cost him his life.

“What could have happened if the cops had been a little more trigger happy?” asked Martin, a current New York City Department of Social Services staffer whom neighbors falsely reported was carrying a large weapon.

“You gotta realize what you’re doing when you make that call.”

Martin joined a panel of advocates and academics in Crown Heights Thursday night to show support for the legislation Hamilton proposed one week after a self-described Trump fan called police on him.

“You should not stand here,” the woman told Hamilton before calling 911 to report him for campaigning. "I support Trump.”

Police recognized Hamilton, who was breaking no laws, but the state senator was jarred by the experience, he said.

“What happens if she says I hit her?” Hamilton said he thought at the time. “How does this happen so many times to men who look like me?”

Hamilton returned to that Flatbush corner one week later to propose legislation that would have made her call, and the call that sent police to Martin’s door, a hate crime.

If enacted, the law would increase penalties by one class for false reporting in the first, second and third degree if it was proven a 911 call was motivated by prejudice about race, nationality, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

"People want to dismiss the bill," said Martin, noting that news of Hamilton’s proposal has been shared on both liberal and conservative news sites across the nation. "But the senator could have gotten killed."

But Hamilton, who is up for reelection in November, said many of constituents in Flatbush, East New York and Crown Heights have offered him complete support.

“Black men say, ‘I love your bill’ because every man of color has been stopped by police,” Hamilton said Thursday. “This bill has hit a nerve.”

Photo by Kathleen Culliton