{"id":29722,"date":"2023-02-04T12:23:39","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T17:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=29722"},"modified":"2023-02-04T12:23:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-04T17:23:46","slug":"a-70-year-old-woman-is-suing-midflorida-credit-union-for-racial-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/02\/04\/a-70-year-old-woman-is-suing-midflorida-credit-union-for-racial-discrimination\/","title":{"rendered":"A 70-year-old woman is suing MidFlorida Credit Union for racial discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 70-year-old retired teacher is suing her credit union claiming racial discrimination, and negligence, after she was not allowed access to her money and was later arrested inside the bank.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Civil rights attorney Ben Crump announce the lawsuit on behalf of Linda Stephens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cMrs. Stephens is a Black grandmother who was a victim of banking while Black,\u201d Crump said during the news conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April of 2021, Stephens says she deposited $600 into the ATM at Mid-Florida Credit Union in Bartow, Florida. The next morning she says she checked her account and the money had not posted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retired teacher and assistant principal for Polk County Schools says she immediately went to the bank with her receipt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephens was told the ATM was broken and to wait a couple of hours, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI waited all day checking my account online and there was nothing that indicated they had credited my money to my account,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day Stephens went back to the bank demanding her money because she needed to pay her mortgage, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the arrest report, Stephens caused a disturbance. Stephens says she just asked for access to her money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credit Union employees called police, who ended up arresting her and taking her to jail, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/5e622521b6b4fae95c21705b99c8bcaf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com\/safeframe\/1-0-40\/html\/container.html Stephens spent the night in jail and the state attorney\u2019s office ended up not filing criminal charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephens\u2019 case mirrors others around the country, according to Crump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery time one these cases, it turns out they [banks] say \u2018we were wrong, we apologize to the Black customer.\u2019 That\u2019s why we believe that banking while Black is real and we don\u2019t believe Mrs. Linda Stephens would have had the police called on her if she were a white woman,\u201d Crump said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in custody Stephens was \u201cthrown face first into a police car.\u201d Her \u201cnose was fractured\u201d and she was \u201cstripped naked and transported to the jail annex,\u201d according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was just traumatized,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cI was humiliated. I was dehumanized. All because I wanted my money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked Crump why they have not filed a lawsuit against the Polk County jail or the officers who allegedly roughed Stephens up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not saying we won\u2019t,\u201d Crump said. \u201cBut this all falls on Mid-Florida Credit Union.  If they had not called the police and had treated Mrs. Stephens as a valued customer, none of this would have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 70-year-old retired teacher is suing her credit union claiming racial discrimination, and negligence, after she was not allowed access to her money and was later arrested inside the bank.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[4445],"class_list":["post-29722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-a-70-year-old-woman-is-suing-midflorida-credit-union-for-racial-discrimination"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}