A White Guy Called the Cops on a Black Woman for Using Her Own Damn Pool

Update 1:42 PM: As of Friday afternoon, Adam Bloom is no longer employed at Sonoco, where he was a business development manager, according to a Twitter statement from the company and WRAL.

Jasmine Edwards attempted to spend her Fourth of July holiday in North Carolina like many Americans: soaking up the warm weather at her community pool with her son. That is, until a member of the residential community's home owner's association approached her and asked for an ID as proof that she had access to use the pool.

After refusing to show her ID, Edwards said the man, Adam Bloom, decided to call the cops, an altercation that she caught on cellphone video. The footage, which she uploaded to Facebook, has since been viewed 4.5 million times and captured what Edwards called "a classic case of racial profiling."

"I am the only black person here with my son—and he walked all the way to me, to ask for my ID. He asked for my address. I give it to him, and then he came back and said, 'Well, I didn’t catch your address correctly. Can you provide an ID to prove the address that you gave to me?'" Edwards tells the officers. "Where does it say that I have to show an ID to use my own pool?"

Bloom's lawyer told the New York Post that his client had been approached by another pool member who had asked him to check Edwards's "credentials." As the HOA's pool chairman, Bloom told the cops he usually checks residents' IDs at the pool "a couple times a week." According to NBC affiliate WXII, Edwards is a resident of the Winston-Salem residential neighborhood and did have a key card to access the community's pool, which she verified with the cops.

"If she has a card to get in the pool, I believe that should be enough," the cop says to Bloom.

"They kinda make their way around sometimes," Bloom responds. "But that’s good enough for me today."

Bloom walked away from the altercation without offering Edwards an apology, but resigned from his position as the community's pool chairman the next day, the Winston-Salem Journa l reports. The homeowner's association also released a statement following the incident.

"In confronting and calling the police on one of our neighbors, the pool chair escalated a situation in a way that does not reflect the inclusive values Glenridge seeks to uphold as a community," it wrote.

In the video, the cops advise Edwards that she can file a civil dispute against Bloom regarding the altercation, which follows a string of recent incidents in which a white person has called the cops on a person of color for essentially no reason—an aggressive reaction that can often just escalate the situation.

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