Posted on 09/05/2015 4:18:02 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Eyewitness account claims man was "trying to buy groceries with his EBT card and ended up in a stretcher"
Editor's Note: The photographs posted on this page are graphic in nature.
Whole Foods has fired a security guard at one of its Oakland locations after photographs of a bloody altercation between a customer and the guard surfaced on Facebook.
Zoe Marks, a fellow at Edinburgh University, was visiting Oakland, when she posted an eyewitness account Thursday of what she described as a “horrific” incident at the Whole Foods Market near Lake Merritt. Marks said the customer "was trying to buy groceries with his EBT card and ended up in a stretcher."
An EBT or Electronic Benefit Transfer card is a replacement for paper food stamps and checks.
“I just saw a young man violently assaulted by an armed security guard at Whole Foods, slammed repeatedly against concrete pillars, put in a chokehold, restrained, and suffocated until he was thrown face down on the pavement unconscious. The guard locked him out of the store despite the fact he was immobile," Marks wrote. In an email, a spokesperson for the supermarket chain said the security guard, who has been "permanently removed from Whole Foods Market," got involved after the customer made physical contact with a store employee.
Whole Foods Market "takes a zero tolerance approach to violence," the spokesperson said.
Marks's photographs show an unidentified man with a black jacket lying on the floor bleeding. Paramedics can be seen attending to the man in another photograph. According to Marks, not a single employee at Whole Foods called the paramedics. It is not immediately clear what events took place right before the altercation. According to Marks: “He was trying to buy groceries with his EBT card and ended up in a stretcher."
Marks wrote she spent an hour giving a written statement to Oakland police officers who showed up at the scene. Requests for comment from Oakland police were not immediately returned.
“I'm sorry for more graphic images of violence against black citizens, but I was here and spoke to the victim (to keep him conscious), perpetrator, several bystanders, and cops,” Marks wrote. “Armed private guards cannot be tolerated in our grocery stores and communities when this is what they do to paying customers. Whole Foods needs to be held accountable — security is NOT selective, it is collective.”
Whole Foods responded on their Facebook page Friday, admitting “there was an altercation that escalated to violence.”
“The graphic images circulating on Facebook and Twitter are disturbing to say the least,” the statement said. “Whole Foods Market considers the safety and security of all team members, customers and members of our community a top priority. The security guard involved in the incident has been suspended, and we are actively investigating the details with our security firm. While we move swiftly to gather the facts, we want to make it clear that Whole Foods Market takes a zero tolerance approach to violence.”
Marks also posted a one-star review of the 230 Bay Place Whole Foods Market on Yelp: "It's time to disarm your guards and put customers first. This young man was violently assaulted by an aggressive security officer while trying to buy groceries with EBT," her comment, which included the graphic photographs, said.
"Horrified customers stayed on the scene for hours," she wrote, adding that they demanded calls to paramedics and "shouted they would never shop at Whole Foods Oakland again."
"I hope that Whole Foods does reveal their fact finding with transparency," Terry De Grace-Morris wrote on Whole Food's Facebook page. "This kind of behavior by law enforcement personnel is no longer tolerated or excused."
“got involved after the customer made physical contact with a store employee.”
Fired for Doing his Job??
I knew there was more to the story...
Do I even need to ask?
like Kim Davis is in jail for doing hers.
Didn’t read the article, but that’s what it sounds like.
“the security guard, who has been “permanently removed from Whole Foods Market,” got involved after the customer made physical contact with a store employee.
Whole Foods Market “takes a zero tolerance approach to violence,” the spokesperson said. “
So if someone gets violent in a Whole Foods store, they’ll fire any employee who interferes. That should make people shopping there feel safe... at least the violent ones.
>>So if someone gets violent in a Whole Foods store, they’ll fire any employee who interferes.
The times that I’ve been in Whole Foods, I’ve felt like I’m in an episode of Portlandia. So, it would make perfect sense to hire a security guard who cannot do anything to create an atmosphere of security.
Disarm their security? Did he use a weapon or did he just put a good old fashioned whupazz on him?
The truth is this. A certain demographic has so raped stores in its neighborhoods by shoplifting and internal theft they have to have armed security, and often police officers. I know of towns that have them at the library and thrift store.
This is why it is so hard to place and maintain a grocery store in the hood. They bleed it dry.
I tried to view the video (there were two), but had to endure that stupid Toyota commercial seven times and nothing ever happened after that, so I just gave up.
I was in one in Ft.Worth, place smelled like patchouli.
why is there a need to point out that the person was using EBT by the “whistle blower”?
Payback for Whole Foods owner not liking Obamacare?
Sounds like Whole Foods is overpaying for “security” if they demand no force or violence if necessary. They could no doubt hire some Jehovah’s Witnesses with Go Pros a lot cheaper.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that his EBT card didn't have enough (taxpayer provided) funds on it.
When the clerk told him that *politely* he went ape$hit and assaulted the clerk.
When the dust settles you can bet your sweet bippy that this idiot did NOT just "enter the store with an EBT card and got beaten up".
Probably some kind of Mike Brown situation where he man-handled the clerk.
And the security guard fixed it.
Why does it matter, I wonder, that the security guard was armed?
No rounds were fired, correct?
My town is across a river from Newark NJ, and the residents there have to come here for groceries; it is simply impossible to operate a supermarket in neighborhoods where fast-food workers slide food to you through bulletproof glass and Chinese restaurants, while doing the same, have no seating area at all for customers. It is simply not safe to be in close physical proximity to the kind of people who would subject themselves to the living conditions of our ghettoes, and when they leave the welfare reservation to shop they are met with wariness by people who know what to expect.
A Wal-Mart in my town (thankfully built by a swamp, away from any residential areas) should be required to fund their own police substation; cops are there all the time dealing with Newark residents, and now it will no longer be open 24 hours.
While many neighbors shop a town or two to the north (much “whiter”), I’ll still shop at the local supermarket - at 6 am. Never had a problem, and any Newark residents there at that time are just like me: Getting some shopping done before heading off to work.
Zoe Maeks. Leftist iort from England. Who needs her? Piers Morgan redux.
A lot wrong here beyond the leftist whiner fro Ol’ Blighty.
Liberalism unbound. No one involved escapes culpability to my mind.
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