A Black bartender’s complaint revealed a vile rant a Hispanic civil rights investigator unleashed on the Ohio bartender for doing little more than trying to make sure she got home safely.
Julia Acosta-Grommon was on her third drink and loudly shouting about her hate for Black people Aug. 29 at Elsa’s Corner Cantina when bartender Ryan Collins asked the woman to leave and instead got berated with racist comments.
“‘Black people are unappreciative dogs who want everything handed to them and work for nothing,'” Acosta-Grommon reportedly said in the Sugarcreek Township bar.
The city is about 15 miles south of Dayton, where Acosta-Grommon worked at the time of the incident, according to records the city emailed Atlanta Black Star Wednesday.
Collins said in a complaint to the city that he knew the woman’s job title because she bragged about it in her rant and had also given her business card to a man she bought a beer for at the bar. He turned it over to Collins.
The bartender said when he asked the woman and her friends to leave “because they were causing a scene,” he told them “driving was not an option” and offered to call them a ride with Uber.
At that point, Acosta-Grommon “became extremely verbally hostile and verbally abusive,” the bartender said.
“She informed me of her position in the city and her position in society,” Collins said. “She compared my career choice to her own and informed me that I would ‘Never be more than a black piece of shit bartender.'”
He also said the woman told him he would “never amount to anything more in life.”
“I repeatedly asked Julia Acosta-Grommon to leave, at which point she said ‘I hate black people, I really do,” Collins said.
She later called Black people “the low-lives of society “and said that’s why “she doesn’t have to listen to a black piece of shit like me,” Collins said.
Acosta-Grommon, having earlier worked at Wright State University, was appointed to the city’s Department of Human Relation Council on April 19, according to records from the woman’s personnel file.
“Ms. Acosta comes highly recommended by the City Manager,” the council said in a memorandum recommending she be paid $60,008 annually.
Acosta-Grommon formerly worked as director of Wright State University’s Office of Latinx, Asian, and Native American Affairs, where she worked to identify programming for undocumented students and other populations, according to the memorandum.
Dayton’s Department of Human Resources got a call from Collins about Acosta-Grommon in early September and later met with her Sept. 13, the Human Relation Council said in another memorandum, to the city manager.
During that meeting, Acosta-Grommon denied the allegations, said she recalled being at the restaurant but didn’t remember any negative exchange with the bartender.
“He was a non-entity,” the woman reportedly said at the meeting.
Craig Orzechowski, part-owner of the bar, and Riquel Webb, one of Collins’ colleagues, both said in separate statements that they heard Acosta-Grommon say she hated Black people.
“After Ms. Acosta-Grommon was refused continued alcohol service and asked to leave by Ryan, I personally heard her say to him, ‘The KKK will be calling on you,'” Webb said in the statement.
Collins said in his statement even as Orzechowski was escorting Acosta-Grommon out of the bar she continued her racist rant.
“She repeatedly told me her hatred for black people and told me ‘You’ll have a cross burning on your lawn when you get home and I hope you get a call from the KKK.'”
The city fired Acosta-Grommon Sept. 17.