--Thanks to N. Sadanand for putting together these three recent cases.
GE
Nordstrom Rack Apologizes to Black Teenagers Falsely Accused of Stealing
The president of Nordstrom Rack flew to St. Louis to apologize on Tuesday to three black friends who were falsely accused last week of trying to steal clothing at one of the company's stores.
The teenage friends had stopped into a Nordstrom Rack in suburban St. Louis on Thursday to look for last-minute deals before a high school prom on Friday night. Two employees followed them throughout the store, closely monitoring their every move, and reported them to the police.
"Every time we moved, they moved," Mekhi Lee, 19, told KMOV-TV in St. Louis on Tuesday. When they left the store — carrying items they had just purchased — police officers were waiting for them outside.
For many minorities, what happened at Nordstrom Rack illustrated a disheartening everyday truth about racial discrimination in the United States, where merely entering a store is enough to draw suspicions. The experiences are not new, but the rise of cellphone video has helped highlight recent cases, including the arrest of two black men last month at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. Inside the store, as the two employees were following them, the friends debated leaving but decided they would buy some items to show that the employees had been wrong, that they were not stealing and that they had money to spend, he said.
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__________ A Woman Said She Saw Burglars. They Were Just Black Airbnb Guests.
It was an entirely routine moment: Four people exited the home they had rented on Airbnb in Rialto, Calif., and loaded suitcases into their car.
Within minutes, several police cars had arrived and the group was being questioned as a helicopter flew overhead. A neighbor who didn't recognize them had reported a possible burglary, the police said.
They were in fact four creative professionals in town for an event. Now the three black people in the group are suing the Rialto Police Department, saying they were unfairly treated during the April 30 encounter.
"Got surrounded by the police for being black in a white neighborhood," one of the guests, Donisha Prendergast, a filmmaker and a granddaughter of Bob Marley, wrote on Instagram. "I'm sad and irritated to see that fear is still the first place police officers go in their pursuit to serve and protect, to the point that protocol supersedes their ability to have discernment."
"We have been dealing with different emotions and you want to laugh about this but it's not funny," Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, another filmmaker, wrote on Instagram. "The trauma is real. I've been angry, frustrated and sad. This is insanity.""Black children — black teenagers and black males, especially — are looked at this way at retail stores all across the country," Mr. Pruitt said. "What are they going to do that goes beyond employees at one store?"
Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan, an artist, pointed out that "over 700 people that look just like me did not walk away alive from a situation like this last year."
The police and the renters offered different versions of events, but both recorded video: The police through their body cameras, the renters through their phones.
Ms. Fyffe-Marshall said the officers came out of their cars, demanding the group put their hands in the air. At first, the renters "joked about the misunderstanding," she said, but the situation escalated after 20 minutes when a sergeant arrived.
The sergeant didn't know what Airbnb was, "insisted that we were lying about it and said we had to prove it," Ms. Fyffe-Marshall said. She showed the officers their booking confirmations and called the landlord, and the group was detained for 45 minutes.
Many people of color have reported that the police have been called on them while going about their everyday business, a fact of life that has seen several prominent examples in recent weeks. National outrage followed the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks; a group of black women had the police called on them for golfing too slowly in York County, Pa.; and two Native American brothers had a college visit in Colorado cut short when a parent told a 911 dispatcher that their behavior and clothing were suspicious.
Airbnb has for years been battling concerns over discrimination — though its focus had been on those renting out their homes, not neighbors. The company brought on prominent advisers, including Eric H. Holder Jr., the former United States attorney general, to help form new policies, and released a 32-page report in 2016 on how it planned to fight discrimination.
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_____________ He Paid for His Mentos. Then an Officer Pulled a Gun on Him.
Jose Arreola walked into a Southern California gas station to buy Mentos on a Friday night in March and still can't shake off what happened next. After he paid for the mints and placed them in his left jacket pocket, an off-duty police officer behind him pulled out his handgun, pointed it at his feet and accused him of stealing them.
"It made me angry," Mr. Arreola, 49, said on Monday. "I felt this fear and thought of my wife. My wife might become a widow tonight."
The night started when Mr. Arreola, who was on his way to a club with his wife, pulled into a Chevron station in Buena Park in Orange County, Calif. He got $60 out of an A.T.M., then remembered that his wife had asked for mints.Standing in front of the cashier, Mr. Arreola scanned a row of candy bars, sweets and gum before reaching for a roll of Mentos. "How much are these?" Mr. Arreola asked the man behind the counter. The cashier told him they were $1.19.
The transaction on March 16, which was recorded by the gas station's security camera, was entirely uneventful until the off-duty officer, who works for the Buena Park Police Department, entered the store. He missed the part when Mr. Arreola handed over $20 for the Mentos.
"Hey, put that back," the officer said as he lifted his sweatshirt and pulled a handgun from his waistband. "Put it back. Police officer."
"I just paid for this," Mr. Arreola responded.
Video shows off-duty officer pulling gun on man mistakenly suspected of stealing Mentos Video by Orange County Register
The misunderstanding was resolved in about 35 seconds — the officer put away his gun and apologized — but it was long enough to taint Mr. Arreola's perception of the police and to land the officer in an internal investigation.
"You can't help but look at all these Facebook videos of cops doing bad things," said Mr. Arreola, who went public with his story on Friday in an interview with The Orange County Register. "The way he cocked his gun, I thought he was going to shoot me if I did any wrong move."
Mr. Arreola said that after the encounter, he filed a complaint with the Police Department against the officer, who has not been identified. The department offered last week to settle the dispute, Mr. Arreola said, but he declined the deal because the amount would have only covered his legal fees.
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To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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