Baby Storme, a musician and popular TikToker based in Los Angeles, has just lived through an awful experience. The woman entered her local branch of Citibank, where she has been a customer for about five years, with a $30k check her father sent to help cover her rent for the year.
While depositing the check was supposed to be a smooth and standard procedure, it quickly turned into a deeply troubling situation. You see, the teller who was handling the transaction proceeded to question the authenticity of the check, ended up confiscating it, and refusing to give it back.
Well, Storme had nothing to hide and offered to call her father or any other person they need to verify the check. But she quickly realized she was experiencing racial profiling firsthand. She decided to record the staff’s behavior and was appalled by the actions that followed next. She posted a series of videos that have gone viral, so take a look below to find out how the story unfolded.
Baby Storme, a musician and popular TikToker based in Los Angeles, was in tears after she got racially profiled at Citibank
Image credits: babystorme
When she tried to deposit a $30k check her father sent her for rent, the teller confiscated it and wouldn’t give it back
When the staff realized Storme was recording their conversation, the employee said to "lock the doors" and called the police
Image credits: babystorme
Image credits: babystorme
Image credits: babystorme
Here's the full video, which got over 19M views, where Storme tells how she attempted to deposit the check
In a follow-up video, Storme thanked her followers for the outpour of support she got after posting the first clip. The woman also revealed more details about this whole incident and answered some of the questions her followers had. First, Storme said that the reason she decided to bring the check to Citibank was that she has been a customer there for almost five years. "Until now," she added.
Then, since the woman mentioned several times she wanted to "cash" the check, many wondered whether she planned on taking out thousands of dollars in cash like it’s no big deal. "When I say 'cash the check', I went in there to deposit the check into my bank account. I wasn’t trying to walk around with $30k cash," the woman explained. "But when I say 'cash', I guess it means the same thing to me, like get the money out of the check."
The TikTok creator also revealed she’s going to sue Citibank. "I don’t really know anything about suing, but I’m spending all of today just researching lawyers and getting on that ASAP." And she has compelling evidence to back up her story. The woman stated her father signed the check: it was "a perfectly fine check, there was nothing wrong with it. They didn’t even try to deposit the check before they started saying they had to 'investigate it'."
To clarify the situation even further, one follower mentioned that as a teller, they always double-check whether a person would like to cash the check or deposit it into their accounts. Storme replied to their comment by saying "[the employee] asked me if I wanted to deposit it and I said yes! [I] put my card in, gave her ID and everything. Just for her to do that."
Here’s another clip from inside the bank the woman posted to back up her version of events
Later on, she provided more details and answered questions her followers had
Then, she showed how the security guard started pulling down the gates after the teller refused to let her out of the bank
This whole incident made people furious. While thousands of users started calling out Citibank's employees' inappropriate behavior and demanding to take responsibility for the incident, sadly, this isn’t a one-of-a-kind story. Pretty much everyone has heard the unsettling and sometimes horrifying tales of people having the police or security called on them while shopping, walking, or being at their place of work. Heck, even by simply owning a golden retriever.
Racial profiling can seriously hurt a person’s self-esteem and make them lose faith in humanity. And as it turns out, it also has a hidden and much more common danger — long-term health problems. "There are enormous health consequences to those experiencing these everyday harms ... because of the constancy of this stress," Rachel Godsil of the Perception Institute, a research group that helps organizations reduce discrimination, told CNN. You see, minority groups who endure everyday discrimination often suffer high rates of chronic diseases.
Godsil explained racial profiling has a broad ripple effect on everyone. "Even if it happens to someone that doesn't look like you, it's a harm to the community," she explained. As an example, she said that many calls about "suspicious" activities are just a person of color walking down the street. This wastes officers' time and resources, which could otherwise be spent protecting communities from actual harm.
Unfortunately, racial profiling is a longstanding and alarming problem that many innocent people have become subject to. While stories like this one are just the tip of the iceberg of what people of color have to live through daily, it raises awareness and shows how important it is to know and stand by your rights. And let's hope it will also teach some people (looking at you, employees of Citibank) to be better human beings.
People were baffled by the bank’s actions, here’s what they had to say
