Making the rounds on TikTok is yet another video showing a white woman preventing a Black woman from leaving a store after allegedly accusing the Black woman of theft last week.
The Black woman recording the video films a blond woman, who appears to work for the store, blocking the exit of an optician’s office.
“What happened? You think I took something from you?” the Black customer asks.
“Um, I don’t know,” the woman seen blocking the exit responds.
“You just locked the door, and you locked me in here, and you said I took something from you,” the Black woman responds. “That’s crazy. I’m coming here to buy things from you. Why would I steal from you?”
Another customer, whom the Black woman later identifies as her girlfriend, explains to the store employees that they had just finished an eye exam next door before visiting the eyewear retailer to browse. Both women then ask the workers if security cameras are installed inside, and the employees respond that they aren’t.
While attempting to state her case against the theft accusations, the Black woman tells the workers they can search her clothing, then requests them to call the police.
“Is it because I’m Black? Is that the problem?” the Black woman states after her girlfriend tells her they’re leaving.
Off camera, viewers can hear dialogue from the white employee still blocking the door, accusing the Black woman’s girlfriend of assault after it appears that she tried to leave the store.
“Did you push me? You know what? That’s assault,” the woman states.
More demands to call the police are made before a white male customer intervenes to chastise the white woman.
“It’s against the law, and you’re confining them, which is also against the law,” the male customer states. “This is racism.”
The white woman finally walks away from the exit as the Black woman’s girlfriend dials 911. The Black woman also explains to the workers that she picked up one pair of frames from the display but put them back and has no eyewear items on her except for the glasses she owns.
“What the f**k gives her the right to think that I took something from you?” she asks an employee.
The video ends after showing the woman’s girlfriend on the phone with a 911 dispatcher.
In another clip, the woman posted to her TikTok, and she overlaid footage from the first video with text explaining that the dispatcher stated that her case wasn’t an emergency. The woman shared that she and her girlfriend went to a police station to file a report.
Thousands of commenters advised the young woman to hire a lawyer to explore civil action and commended the male customer for rebuking the white employee’s actions.
“That man at the front, thank you for saying something! So many times people sit back and say nothing. Sorry this happened to you guys,” one person commented.
“Why would someone steal frames that aren’t even a prescription to their eyes? I don’t understand it,” someone else wrote.
“Wow. This must feel just terrible,” another comment read.
The Black woman shared that the incident happened at Bloor Optical in Toronto, Canada.
Although the store’s website is still live, all information has been removed. Reviews were also disabled on the business’s Yelp page due to “increased public attention resulting in an influx of people posting their views.”
“While racism has no place on Yelp and we unequivocally reject racism or discrimination in any form, all reviews on Yelp must reflect an actual first-hand consumer experience (even if that means disabling the ability for users to express points of view we might agree with),” the message on Yelp reads.
