In a series of videos posted on Instagram, a White pregnant woman is filmed calling the police on a Black woman seemingly for sitting in a public park on the Upper West Side of New York City.
The soon-to-be mother identifies herself in the video as Svitlana Flom, who is a restaurateur and supposed socialite.
In the post of 10 short videos, the New Yorker, who in her bio identifies herself as a health care worker, says that Flom called police on her multiple times. “She was too ‘alarmed’ that I was sitting ‘comfortably’ in ‘her neighborhood.’
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”She’s playing the Black card,” Flom is heard saying, “She’s filming me.”
According to user Pretty Brown‘s caption, the first call was because the woman thought she was smoking in public. By the third call, the post says, Flom was crying and saying that the woman behind the camera was threatening her and her children.
Flom said she wanted the footage to be erased.
In one of the videos, the Black woman pans the camera and says, “that’s my building. This is my neighborhood. I have the right to be here.”
Even more audaciously, when police finally come near the scene, Flom beckons to the woman filming to walk with her to them. “Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? Me, leaving my comfort to walk with you to the police?”
According to the Daily Mail, Flom co-owns Madison Vivienne, a French restaurant with locations in Southampton and the Upper East Side.
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The incident lasted for over an hour and the woman’s husband, former President and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover Manhattan Gary Flom, walked away early in the confrontation leaving his wife and children. She, however, remained sitting across from the woman filming her.
The Black woman said that she could have “walked away,” but wondered how the woman could feel “so privileged and so comfortable to tell me I should leave?”
Police did eventually arrive and told Flom that there was nothing to be done about a woman sitting in a public park in her own neighborhood.
theGrio reached out to the woman who posted the video but did not hear back from her by the time of publishing this story. An email requesting comment on the video was sent out to an email address listed on Flom’s Instagram page, but a return email indicated the email address is no longer active.
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