Photo Courtesy of WBS TV
A Clayton County Georgia Detention Center officer, David Conners, has filed a lawsuit against Walmart, alleging racial profiling and mistaken detention.
Conners, who is African American, was shopping at a Walmart in Fayetteville, Georgia. The man was attempting to purchase items for his new home. As he strolled through the aisles, a Walmart employee confronted him, his attorney, Terance Madden, told The Washington Post in an interview.
“He’s just in the store, minding his own business when he’s approached by the police, and everything went downhill from there.”
ABC News reported that a Fayetteville police officer stopped him and handcuffed him after responding to the Walmart chief loss-prevention officer’s claim that Conners was a man with the last name Wright who had repeatedly stolen electronics from the store.
Despite giving the authorities two pieces of identification, including his local corrections officer ID, Conners was still taken to a back room and held while police investigated.
The officers showed Conners surveillance footage claiming he was stealing the store’s merchandise, but Conners pointed out that he has visible tattoos, while the alleged shoplifter didn’t. It wasn’t until the Fayetteville officers contacted the detective investigating the named shoplifter and received confirmation that their fellow law enforcement brother was not the shoplifter in question.
Conners says the incident has broadened his perspective on the issue of racial profiling as it relates to his work as a corrections officer.
“You see it all the time, but you never believe it’s going to happen to you until it happens to you,” Madden said. “It becomes personal, and a violation is something you can’t help to think about over and over and over again when it happens to you.”
“They only stopped him because he was big, and he was Black,” he added.