*A California woman is speaking out about being racially profiled while shopping for essentials during a coronavirus lockdown.
Deja Patterson, 24, says she and her mom Theresa, and her cousin Reem, hit up a WinCo Foods in Pittsburg, California, on Monday evening and were accosted over a bag of lemons, MadameNoire reports.
The women live in Castro Valley and visited the Pittsburg location to shop for necessities after the county was placed under a shelter-in-place lockdown.
“Grocery stores here are scarce, we knew that going to WinCo, we would find most likely what we need. We had called WinCo actually beforehand and they had told us that they were fully stocked so that is why we went there,” Patterson said in an interview with MadameNoire.
Here’s more of the report:
Patterson said after security admitted them into the store, they visited the produce section but were unable to locate clear plastic produce bags. After looking around, the group asked a worker in the produce section if there were any bags, to which he responded no. According to Patterson, they “improvised” and decided to use a bag for grapefruits, by dumping the fruit into its section. They then filled the empty grapefruit bag with lemons. All of a sudden, the same worker informed them that they would have to walk to the back of the store and retrieve a produce bag. As the group complied and gathered their lemons, they were approached by an employee named Kenny, who later introduced himself as the store manager.
The almost eight-minute video, captured by Reem, picks up minutes after the confrontation with Kenny begins as he confronts Patterson and her mom about the empty grapefruit bag in their cart, accusing them of stealing. Patterson told MadameNoire the video did not show that Kenny had followed the group and aggressively reached inside their cart to grab the empty grapefruit bag.
Watch the clip below.
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“When he came from behind us, he immediately swarmed in and stuck his hand directly in our cart, and rummaged through the rest of our groceries that were in our full basket and removed the lemons, saying immediately, ‘You guys are stealing and lost prevention has called this in and you have to leave,” Patterson said.
“He did not even introduce himself at all. We knew nothing of what position he was, who he was, where he came from, if he was loss prevention, nothing,” she continued, claiming that she and her mother were assaulted during the incident.
“He’s coming and attacking three women unannounced,” said Patterson. “It was completely unannounced and he provoked us to the point where we felt like we had to record because we didn’t know where it could go.”
Kenny can be heard saying in the video, “At this point, we’re refusing service because you’re trying to steal.”
The women are further harassed by the store’s security guard, who co-signs Kenny’s accusations and demands the women leave the store. When the cops arrived to the scene, the women are told “Kenny made a citizen’s arrest and they were complying with WinCo’s policy regarding the matter,” the report states.
WinCo has not yet addressed the incident.
“It just felt like so much racism, it just felt like so much racial profiling,” Patterson said. “I felt like we were targeted and I don’t want to be targeted ever.”
She added, “The only that I can ask for is accountability because that is on their property,” said Patterson. “The correct response I think would be to have Kenny and the other gentleman fired and to have better training going forward because this doesn’t have to happen again.”
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