Investigating video allegedly showing white woman calling police on Black family at pool

In August 2026, a rumor spread that a video online authentically showed a white woman calling the police on a Black man who was spending time by a swimming pool in Chicago with his two children. 

The video circulated across social media, including on Instagram and X. One post on X claimed the white woman asked to see the father’s identification. She then allegedly called the police (archived). 

In the video, two white women can be seen standing near the man who is filming. One of the women is holding a phone to her ear. Meanwhile, the man with the camera can be seen pointing towards the woman and white people in and around the pool. His hand and leg show that he has dark skin, like the children who appear in the video. One child seems to be a male teenager and the other is a younger boy, who appears to be between eight and 11 years old. 

The man who is filming can be heard retelling the situation and saying “welcome to Chicago.” He is also underscoring that the woman asked only him to show ID, not any of the white people in and around the pool. 

Later in the video, the younger boy begins to cry, saying to the man who is filming, “I don’t want you to go to jail.” 

The Atlanta Black Star, a news outlet that covers issues related to Black people in the U.S., published a report on the alleged incident.

The video was first posted on Aug. 3, 2026, on the Facebook account of a man named Leo Sullivan.

In the comments below, the man provided the exact address of the Arden of Warrenville, an apartment complex in Warrenville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. 

In short, Snopes is still awaiting confirmation that events in the video genuinely occurred as described, though we found no evidence the video itself was generated using artificial intelligence tools or otherwise manipulated. We reached out to Sullivan, the Warrenville Police Department and the apartment complex where the incident reportedly took place. We will update this report should we receive a response.

We have confirmed that the pool shown in the video is the same pool that appears in the pictures the apartment complex’s management posted on Google Maps and on its website. The buildings that surround the pool are also the same. 

Sullivan’s caption to the video referred to the woman on the phone as “Karen,” a name that has become a moniker for the entitlement of white women in the U.S. It read:

Racist Karen and her buddy called the police on me and my children because we were the only Blacks at the pool, after I showed them proof that I stay here, she requested, asking for my identification. Like who brings ID to a swimming pool? Anyway, the police came and I intelligently explained I don’t have to show them S***! I paid good money like everyone else, accept I am Black. Karen was all smiles until the police told them, I don’t have to show them anything. This really traumatize my children. I might sue these people. This world is terrible, she saw my child crying and begin smiling more. Just for That I got into the pool and played with my boys.

The next day, on Aug. 4, Sullivan posted a second video saying he and his family “made it back to Atlanta,” indicating he and the boys were in Illinois only temporarily. According to the caption of that video, the family had been staying in an Airbnb on the property.

“The video went viral, which is unfortunate,” Sullivan said in the second video. He added that he sought to obtain the names of the two white women, who refused to provide them. He said they called the police on him a second time, saying he was harassing them. Sullivan said the police officer who arrived understood the situation and “knew what was going on.” 

For further reading, Snopes has investigated several videos purporting to report racist incidents, including the video of a white woman allegedly calling police on the Boston chief of police.