Berkeley police arrest woman in alleged hate crime against delivery driver

A California woman was arrested by Berkeley police last week over an alleged hate crime involving a delivery driver.

Police said Tuesday that when they responded to a call on April 18 they encountered a 35-year-old woman and her boyfriend, who had both followed a package delivery driver they believed was driving too fast in the area.

The woman, later identified by police as Julie Walrand, and her boyfriend allegedly prevented the driver from leaving the area, with Walrand using “hateful language disparaging people of color.”

She was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment, battery, using offensive words and “willfully threatening a person based on their perceived characteristics,” police said.

The Hill has reached out to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office for comment regarding potential charges.

The delivery driver, Kendall McIntosh, who is Black, told KRON that he felt unsafe during the incident. He said Walrand, who is white, jumped into his vehicle and tried to take control of the steering wheel.

“Instantly just started cursing me out like, first sentence I’m getting cursed at,” McIntosh said. “Very derogatory language, you know I was getting constant F-bombs thrown at me. I was getting just racially profiled from the jump.”

Cellphone footage obtained by KRON appears to show Walrand and her boyfriend confronting McIntosh and screaming at him.

But McIntosh told the outlet that it was “constantly” occurring to him during the altercation was that it “could be me in handcuffs instead of her.”

“No matter what the situation is, just protect yourself. If you feel like you have to videotape it or anything, definitely do that because I felt like if there wasn’t a video, there wasn’t her being recorded, she probably could have gotten away with saying this,” he told the outlet.