A Black Ohio man, Eric Lindsay, has filed a discrimination lawsuit against a convenience store and two police officers after being detained for a white man’s shoplifting crime.
Lindsay, of Liberty Township, went to a West Chester Meijer store off Interstate 75 and Tylersviller Road on his way home from work on Jan. 29, 2021, reported WXIX. He walked into the store shortly after a shoplifting incident occurred.
Meijer employees described the suspect as a white man in his 30s who wore a green or gray Carhart coat with a red hoodie underneath to authorities. However, the police stopped 60-year-old Lindsay, clearly Black and wearing a puffy orange coat with a tan and brown scarf.
Body camera footage showed police approaching the Ohio resident and accusing him of stealing, telling him to take his hands out of his jacket pocket, said his lawsuit. It also stated that Lindsay suffered humiliation, embarrassment, and severe emotional distress.
His attorney, Fanon Rucker, noted that he was the only African American in the store and “is the last person they should have stopped.”
“They walked past a dozen or more shoppers, don’t speak to a single one, and go to him and start bothering him,” he said.
The suit expounded upon this fact, stating that Lindsay was racially profiled like so many other African Americans in similar incidents around the U.S.
“In the same being as so many national instances where African-Americans have been confronted by law enforcement for engaging in their daily lives and doing nothing illegal, this case is about the unsupportable and illegal profiling, detention, accusing, and interrogation of an African-American customer by Police Officers and the complicit actions of the retail store where it occurred.”
It also indicated that the manager of Meijer “did nothing to prevent or stop the unconstitutional detention.”
According to the lawsuit, the officers involved in the incident, identified as Tanner Csendes and Timothy Mitkenbaugh, later apologized. They claimed they made a mistake after learning that another officer had the real shoplifting suspect in custody.
They even told Lindsay that he matched the description provided to them by Meijer’s store manager.
Finally, the manager apologized for the so-called mix-up.
West Chester police spokesperson, Barb Wilson, declined to comment, saying the township doesn’t speak on pending litigation.
