GOP New Jersey Official Calls 911 On 9-Year-Old Black Girl Catching Lanternflies

Bobbi Wilson, a fourth grade student in Caldwell, New Jersey, was merely testing a homemade spray against the invasive lanternfly species on her street when a neighbor — a former Republican official — called the cops on her.

“The morning of October 22, our neighbor [Gordon Lawshe] called the police, identified himself and reported, ‘There’s a little black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees. I don’t know what the hell she is doing, it scares me though,’ and included that she was wearing a hoodie,” Wilson’s mother Monique Joseph, said during a mayor and council meeting on Nov. 1, according to local outlet The Progress.

Wilson, 9, learned about regional “see it, squish it” campaigns to help stop the spread of the lanternflies while writing a school paper on their environmental impact. After finding a nontoxic spray recipe on TikTok, she went outside to test it ― only for Lawshe’s call to scare her from going outside again, according to BuzzFeed News.

Lawshe, 71, former local councilperson, co-head and treasurer of the Caldwell Republican Committee, and membership director of the Caldwell Community Center, told police they couldn’t “miss” the Black “small woman” — who was wearing a “hood.”