H&M under fire after Black woman falsely accused of stealing details humiliating police harassment
After propping a little black boy in a picture with a hoodie emblazoned with “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle,” on it, you’d think the retail giant H&M would have some chill or would have led an implicit bias training of some sort for its employees.
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But here we are, with a Black woman in Pembroke Mines Florida hurt after reporting that she shopped at the H&M store at Pembroke Lakes Mall and was racially profiled, CBS News reports.
“It was a black thing. Period. I wasn’t the only person in there. Why me?” asked Daniela Taylor, after getting stopped by officers and accused of stealing on Tuesday.
Taylor said she was in the store to return a pair of earrings. Then she saw another pair that she liked and decided to purchase those. But Taylor said she walked out of the store she was accosted by two loss prevention officers who embarrassed her in front of people and claimed that she was a thief.
“He’s like, ‘That’s it. You’re going to jail.’ I’m like, ‘but for what?’” asked Taylor.
“I’m cursing because obviously I have already told him I didn’t do anything. I said, ‘you should understand where I’m coming from. If you were on the other end of the table, you should understand how they do us these days.’ He said, ‘Don’t pull the race card on me,’” said Taylor.
After security footage revealed that Taylor in fact did not steal as she said, she was let go.
But she wants the officers held accountable.
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“They need to be better at who they hire. They really need to look into people and do the extensive training that needs to be done,” said Taylor.
H&M released the following statement:
“We are aware of the incident that took place in our Pembroke Lakes Mall location. Unfortunately this was a misunderstanding and we are sorry. We have since let go of the third party security company that was involved and we are reviewing our internal procedures to make sure this type of incident does not happen again and that our routines are properly followed. We will be getting in touch with the customer to follow up on the steps we have taken.”
