‘Other than her mouth, there’s not any weapons’: 911 calls for 5 black women at Pa. golf club – By Ed Mahon & Candy Woodall (York Daily Record) / May 30 2018
When Steve Chronister called 911 about a group of women he said was holding up other golfers, the dispatcher asked him some basic questions.
“No weapons or anything like that, right?” the dispatcher asked.
“It’s even worse than that, but anyway I can’t …” Chronister said.
The dispatcher cut in to clarify.
“OK, sir, there’s no weapons, right?” the dispatcher asked.
“No,” Chronister said, repeating the no multiple times. “Other than her mouth, there’s not any weapons.”
That phone call and another from Chronister on April 21 led to national attention for York County.
The five black women Chronister called about said they were discriminated against by the ownership and staff at Dover Township’s Grandview Golf Club on April 21. And other golfers on the course have defended the women and said they were keeping proper pace of the game.
Chronister, a former York County president commissioner whose son and daughter-in-law own the course, made both calls to police.
In the first phone call, he referred to one of the golfers specifically: York attorney Sandra Thompson. He said Thompson said Chronister couldn’t make them leave.
Here’s how Chronister described Thompson’s statements: “We’re gonna tell everybody we know. We’re five black women, and this is how it’s gonna be.”
Chronister told the 911 dispatcher that he knew her.
“She ran for judge. She’s an attorney. She knows it all,” Chronister told the dispatcher. “She totally thinks we’re being racist. We’re not being racist. We’re being golf course management that has to have play moving a certain way.”
He placed the first call around 11:20 a.m. It lasted nearly three minutes.
“We have a tough situation here with a group of golfers that decides they don’t want to abide by the rules,” he said.
He asked for a police officer to come to the golf course. He told the dispatcher he was the manager for the course. He said the five women were holding everybody up and wouldn’t listen to him.
At one point in the conversation, the dispatcher tried to clarify what the women were doing.
“OK. And they’re just literally standing at the hole? They’re not ….” the dispatcher asked.
Chronister replied that they were on pace to be three to five holes behind by the time they finished the 9th hole.
That phone call ended with the dispatcher saying police would come to the course.
But when police arrived, management said they weren’t needed, according to Northern York County Regional Police Chief Mark Bentzel.
But Chronister again called 911 at about 1:25 p.m., after the women had completed the ninth hole. He asked a dispatcher to send an officer back. He also appeared to refer to Thompson specifically.
“I want her off the golf course,” Chronister said, adding moments later that officers are “going to have to get out here quickly.”
“How many people need removed?” the dispatcher asked.
“There’s two now. There were five,” Chronister replied.
During the second conversation, Chronister was again asked if they had weapons.
“No. Just her mouth,” he said.
That call again ended with a dispatcher saying police were on their way.
Police met with the women and course management and determined there was not a police issue, according to Bentzel.
The women left and no charges were filed.
The five women were: Thompson, president of the York branch of the NAACP and a former candidate for county judge; Myneca Ojo; sisters Sandra Harrison and Carolyn Dow; and Karen Crosby.
Sandra Thompson, right, speaks alongside Sandra Harrison, both golfers and members of a group of women known as Sisters in the Fairway, during an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, April 24, 2018, in York, Pa. Officials at the Grandview Golf Club in York called police on the group Saturday, April 21, 2018, accusing them of playing too slowly and holding up others behind them. (Photo: Jacqueline Larma, AP)
Chronister did not return calls and texts on Wednesday seeking comment on the 911 recordings. On April 30, he told the York Daily Record he’d love for people to know the full story but has since declined comment.
His lawyer also has not returned multiple calls seeking comment.
Thompson’s recollection of that day with Chronister and golf management remains the same.
“He saw a group of black women and told them to get off the course,” she said. “He racially profiled us. Would he have called the cops on a white group of golfers? Would he have done that to a white lawyer and judge candidate he knew? No.”
Thompson said she doesn’t know why Chronister considered her mouth to be a weapon.
“I was never loud. I was never cursing. I was simply pointing out he was treating us differently,” she said.
Thompson, a practicing lawyer, said she didn’t see a valid reason for club management to call the cops or ask the women to leave.
“There was no breach of law,” she said. “There was no criminal trespass. We weren’t doing anything but playing under our memberships. We paid. We wanted to play.”
The York Daily Record filed a Right-to-Know request with the county asking for any 911 transcript or 911 recordings or communications requesting police at Grandview Golf Club on April 21. On April 25, the county said it would take an additional 30 days to respond to the request.
Pennsylvania’s open records law states that telephone or radio transmissions received by emergency dispatch personnel are not a public record unless “the agency or a court determines that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the interest in nondisclosure.”
In this case, York County officials decided to release the recordings.
In April, after national outcry over the arrests of two black men at a Starbucks, Philadelphia police released recordings of the 911 call and radio-voice communications exchanges that led to the arrests.
