Summary: A Target employee was fired after falsely accusing a black woman of stealing a bikini.
A black customer was forced to expose herself after being falsely accused of shoplifting at Target. The employee who accused her was promptly fired, but the customer is considering filing a lawsuit, according to Business Insider.
Ashonae Davis, 20, was shopping at a Target in Michigan, and she said that when she was about to leave, she was stopped by an employee who thought she had stolen a bikini. She was handcuffed by a second employee, and the two walked her to another room, where she was forced to prove her innocence. The two male employees, loss prevention officers, thought she had worn the suit underneath her clothes.
Davis said that when she was stopped, she was handcuffed and forced to do a “walk of shame.” She said that while walking one of the employees yelled out that she had been stealing “panty swimwear.”
Her attorney, Jasmine Rand, said that she had been racially profiled and wanted to sue.
“I was so scared,” Davis told WJBK. “I had never had anything close or near to that happen to me.”
Davis said that a female manager was called but that the two men insisted on seeing her disrobe.
“They actually forced her to pull up her shirt and pull down her pants in front of two male employees at Target,” Rand said.
Target said that they were looking into the incident and that one of the employees was fired.
“We want everyone who shops at Target to feel welcomed and respected and take any allegations of mistreatment seriously,” the company said. “We’re sorry for the actions of our former team member, who created an experience we don’t want any guest to have at Target. Upon reviewing our team’s actions, we terminated the team member who was directly involved and are addressing the situation with the security team at the store.”
Target stated that they do not have a policy of parading potential shoplifters through the store, but Business Insider said that there had been a string of such incidents in 2015.
News of what happened to Davis comes at a time when racial profiling of black customers has gone viral in the news. In May, two black men were arrested for waiting for a friend at a Philadelphia Starbucks, and although they did not sue, Starbucks and the men settled on a payment to a local charity. The incident prompted Starbucks to close all of its stores weeks later for one day so that every employee could receive anti-bias training.
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