Woman falsely accused of stealing earrings from store told by loss prevention officer, 'Don't pull the race card on me'

A woman was falsely accused of shoplifting at an H&M store located at Pembroke Lakes Mall in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and the treatment she received by loss prevention officers has left her emotional.

Daniela Taylor, who was at the store last Tuesday, claims that the incident was the result of racial profiling.

According to Taylor, she went to the store to return a pair of earrings and to buy another pair. As she was leaving, she was approached by two loss prevention officers who accused her, in an unnecessary public display, of stealing the earrings she had just purchased.

Taylor told CBS Miami, “It was a black thing. Period. I wasn’t the only person in there. Why me?”

Taylor told the outlet that one of the officers, who worked for a third-party security company and not directly for H&M, told her that she was going to jail. That comment particularly upset her because the officer was also black, and she believed he should know that the threat of police brutality disproportionally affects black people.

“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,'” Taylor said, alluding to the police. “He said, ‘Don’t pull the race card on me.’”

After the loss prevention officers reviewed security footage, they realized Taylor did not steal anything, and they offered an apology. That apology is not enough for Taylor, who was publicly shamed for a crime she did not commit and threatened with jail. She is calling for H&M to provide better training for their workers.

According to the H&M website, the most expensive pair of earrings available is $24.99, a price that hardly seems worthy of such a harsh reaction by the officers.

H&M provided 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.”

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