Another woman has come forward alleging that she was racially profiled at a Southfield Target store.
In a news release, the attorneys representing 23-year-old Ashanae Davis who first claimed that two Target loss prevention officers confronted her on May 22, accusing her of stealing a bikini from the store.
Since then, Davis' attorneys, Jasmine Rand and Maurice Davis, said that they have received numerous calls from others who claim they, too, have been racially profiled at the Southfield Target store.
The attorneys will hold a press conference on Monday, June 11 at 2 p.m. at the Ford Building in Detroit to introduce the second alleged victim.
Davis' attorneys also claim that several Target employees who worked at the Southfield location have claimed that it has become common practice for employees to profile African-American customers.
In a release, attorneys state that they will "share evidence gathered from employees that worked at Target and witnessed or experienced racial discrimination first-hand."
Target responded to our report with the following statement:
At Target, we want our stores to be welcoming places for all guests and want everyone to have a positive experience every time they engage with our team. However, we know there are times when we fall short, and in those situations we do everything we can to make it right with our guests and reinforce Target’s expectations with our team members.
Immediately after the incident with Ms. Davis, a Southfield store leader spoke with her to apologize and we launched a full investigation with our team. As part of the investigation, we terminated the store’s security team member the day after the incident for not following Target’s defined security procedures and took disciplinary action with other involved team members. Additionally, Target’s head of store security and our regional leadership team went to Southfield last week to meet with the store team and reinforce our security procedures and expectations for how we engage with our guests.
While we’re not in a position to comment specifically on today’s allegations, we will immediately review the concerns raised. We take all allegations of employee misconduct seriously and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. We regularly train our team members to uphold Target’s values, including longstanding security training, unconscious bias training that’s been rolling out to our entire team since 2017, and guest service training. We want our team members, guests and all families to know we will never tolerate anything except respect and inclusion for everyone.
