Last week, Sauntore Thomas, a black man from Detroit, had a victory over profiling when he settled a race discrimination case against his former employer.
But as he learned this week, it was too soon to celebrate.
When he tried Tuesday to deposit the money at his TCF Bank, a new lawsuit says, he met resistance that escalated with a call to the police and what amounted to a claim of racial discrimination against the bank. The lawsuit called it “banking while black.”
After the assistant branch manager called the police, Mr. Thomas, 44, was questioned by two Livonia Police Department officers in the lobby for about an hour, Mr. Thomas and his lawyer, Deborah Gordon said in interviews on Thursday. He was also accused of fraud, even after Ms. Gordon texted screenshots of documents showing that he had just won the funds from the settlement, she said.
“I have had this with black clients before,” Ms. Gordon said. “There can be a lot of questions when they suddenly have money.”
Lt. Charles Lister, the investigative bureau commander at the police department, said that Mr. Thomas was not handcuffed or patted down, that the two officers were in the bank with him for 50 minutes and that two others briefly waited outside. “He was never told he could not leave by our officers,” Lieutenant Lister said.
Source: NyTımes
