A white man was arrested and charged with “ethnic intimidation, communicating threats, disorderly conduct and going armed to the terror of the public” after threatening a Black man with a gun at a polling station in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Derek Partee, a retired homicide detective from New York and GOP vice chairman for the state’s 12th Congressional District, posted photos to Facebook on Wednesday of three white people dressed in black shirts with white skulls standing in a parking lot.
According to Partee’s post, he was volunteering at the polls in the neighborhood of Steele Creek when the group had called him the N-word and a “Black piece of shit.” Partee wrote that one of the men exposed his weapon to him, so he backed off and called the police.
https://www.facebook.com/derek.partee/posts/10156826915653011
As the Root points out, Partee’s phone call to the police is a refreshing change to months of viral videos that catch white people calling the cops on Black people totally minding their business. Partee, however, didn’t just pick up the phone because he saw someone sitting in their car across the street.
According to the News & Observer, Partee was told shortly after arriving at the polling place that the three people in the parking lot had been taking photos and were at the site previously. He then decided to take down the license plate of the car. At that point, the man who was later arrested, Jason Donald Wayne, got out of the car and confronted Partee.
“He said something about being a Republican, I said I am a Republican, he said ‘Motherfucker you ain’t shit,'” Partee told the publication. “They didn’t care whether I was a Democrat or a Republican, they just cared that I was Black.”
That’s when Wayne exposed his weapon to Partee. The publication reported that it was “unclear” what type of gun was in Wayne’s holster at the time of the incident. Hours later, Wayne was found in possession of a BB gun in his holster when he was arrested by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. According to WSOC-TV, police and FBI are also considering whether federal charges are “appropriate.”
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H/T the Root