During an interview with 99.1 FM in Seattle, Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor further detailed an incident earlier this week when gym employees called the police on him and his friends.
Chancellor said he is looking to purchase a gym and was trying to get information on the Redmond Athletics Club, which shut down recently. He and his friends knocked on the door, but when nobody came out they decided to take pictures of the facility to reference later.
"The first thing the lady did was look at us with an evil, devil look and shooed us off," Chancellor said.
"We were like, ‘Can we just get information? That’s all.’ We don’t want to do anything else but get information. We didn’t knock on the door anymore after that. We just waved them like, ‘Could you please come here?’ But they decided to stand 10 to 15 yards away behind a desk, saying, ‘We’re going to call the cops.’"
In the 911 call, the gym employee said, "I don’t know if they’re homeless kids. I know that there used to be a lot of heroin addicts around here."
Chancellor expressed his dismay with that description on Instagram and Twitter:
The 911 call was all I needed to hear.. Thank you Lord for the truth. Read between the lines. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
— Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 5, 2016
I'm not speaking for myself anymore. I'm tired of hearing these stories. We are all equal. When we die we go into the same box.
— Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 5, 2016
Character over Color.. Let's learn patience and understanding.
— Kameron (@Kam_Chancellor) March 5, 2016
On the call, the employee described three African Americans and two white subjects.
The 911 dispatcher asked specifically, “Can I get further description on the black subjects?”
In an email to ESPN.com, Becky Range, the Redmond Police Department's public-information coordinator wrote: “We completely understand why some have questions about this. Our dispatchers are trained to get as much information as possible, so they can pass on to responding officers. They tailor their questions based on what and how the caller is reporting. In this particular call, the dispatcher asked for descriptions of the black subjects first, because that is the order the caller reported them in. It’s hard to hear on the call, but the caller reported ‘three African-Americans, two white.’ The call then evolved, as the dispatcher needed to let them know the status of the responding officers, then ask the direction the vehicle was traveling in response to what the caller was reporting.
With all that being said, the communications team asked for a detailed quality assurance review of this call, which supervisors completed yesterday. Good, tough questions help us examine our actions, refine our training and improve our procedures. That’s a good thing.”
The owner of the gym has since said the employees acted appropriately.