US pharmacy chain fires two employees for calling police on black woman trying to use coupon
'This is from from over,' says victim
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Your support makes all the difference.A major US pharmacy firm has fired two employees after the emergence of a video showing store managers calling the police on a black woman over a coupon.
In her Facebook post accompanying footage of the incident, the victim, Camilla Hudson, said that she had tried to make a purchase with a coupon mailed to her by the product manufacturer.
This was disputed by one of the men, who claimed it was fake.
Her photo of the coupon showed a December 2018 expiration date, indicating it was still useable.
Eventually the manager walked away. When Ms Hudson followed him “he ran to the back of the store and slammed a door in my face.” Then, she said, another manager arrived to tell her to leave because he had called the police.
“Needless to say,” Ms Hudson added, “this is far from over."
The episode is among the latest in a string of well-documented encounters captured on video in which a white person calls the police on a black person for what are, at the most, misunderstandings common to daily life.
These encounters have included a white apartment complex manager who called the police on a black man wearing socks in the complex’s pool; a white woman who called the police on a 8-year-old black girl for selling water; and a white Yale student who called the police on a black graduate student who had fallen asleep in her dorm’s common room.
“Police were informed that a female was inside the store threatening the staff and refusing to leave,” said a Chicago Police statement, adding that the “victim did not press charges and no police report was filed.”
CVS Health said that it had “sincerely apologised to Ms Hudson for her experience” and that after an investigation, “the two colleagues who were involved are no longer employed by CVS Health.”
A company spokesman, Mike DeAngelis, said CVS would not identify the pair, but specified that “they were both employed as shift supervisors at the store.”
New York Times
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