Former CVS Employees Say They Were Told to Target Customers of Color For Shoplifting

In a Bronx Supreme Court on Monday, two more former CVS investigators told a similar story which echoes the stories of four additional former employees who filed a discrimination suit against CVS in 2015. According to The New York Times, Lacole Simpson, Kerth Pollack, Sheree Steele, and Delbert Sorhaindo filed a class action suit against the chain last June, alleging they were dismissed after complaining about being told to target customers who looked like them. Sorhaindo says he was once told to “hide like a monkey” to catch shoplifters. Once the four complained about their treatment to upper management, they say they were targeted by supervisors, labeled bad apples, and fired.

CVS joins Macy’s and Barney’s in developing a reputation for targeting black and brown customers. Last year, CVS spokeswoman Carolyn Castel said her outfit “has firm nondiscrimination policies that it rigorously enforces,” and was “shocked by the allegations.” A CVS spokesperson now tells The Daily News the company still doesn’t “tolerate any practices that discriminate against any of our customers or employees, and our market investigator training explicitly prohibits the profiling of customers.”