‘Heavily Intoxicated’ NYPD Officer Breaks Into the Wrong House, Uses Racial Slurs on Frightened Family

An NYPD officer could face charges for aggravated trespassing after Nashville police say he broke into a Black family’s home earlier this year and made racist threats.

Officer Michael Reynolds was brought in for questioning last week in connection with a break-in at a home in Nashville’s 12 South neighborhood, local station WKRN reported. Resident Conese Halliburton said the incident occurred in the middle of the night July 9.

Halliburton, who lives down the street from two rental homes notorious for wild Airbnb guests, said she awakened by Reynolds breaking into her home. Authorities said home surveillance captured the officer walking down the street around 2:30 a.m. not long before the incident.

“It’s like ‘Boom! Boom! Boom beating at the door,” Halliburton recalled at the time. “You heard the big boom and that was my door getting kicked in. My sons were trying to stop him and he’s like, ‘this is my m*****f*****n house, this is my house!’ He kept repeating it.”

In a video of the incident obtained by New York’s ABC 7, a man is heard shouting “Try to shoot me, I’ll break every bone in your F****** neck. You F****** N******.”

Halliburton described the suspect as a white male with a buzz cut and blue eyes. She also he said he appeared to be heavily “intoxicated and disoriented.”

The next day, the woman said she confronted several men, including Reynolds, who were staying at one of the rentals for the weekend, ABC 7 reported. That exchange was also caught on video.

“You don’t understand what you all did to me, it was rude!” Halliburton is heard shouting. “What was you on?”

“I’m sorry,” one of the men says. “I thought it was this house. I thought it was this house.”

According to Metro Police, Reynolds was flown into Nashville and questioned by authorities on Tuesday — nearly a month after the break-in happened. NYPD officials said the officer’s duty status hasn’t changed pending the outcome of Nashville’s investigation.

As for Halliburton, she said she and her family are still struggling to get over the frightening incident.

“I’m working on no sleep,” she said. “I have nightmares. My kids are having nightmares.”

Watch more in the video below.

Independent journalism still matters.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Back to top