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Woman Claims Racial Profiling After Being Falsely Accused Of Stealing From Pines H&M Store

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PEMBROKE PINES (CBSMiami) – A woman who says she was falsely accused of shoplifting at the H&M store at Pembroke Lakes Mall is still in tears over an incident she calls racial profiling.

"It was a black thing. Period. I wasn't the only person in there. Why me?" asked Daniela Taylor, who says she was shopping at the store on Tuesday.

Daniela says she went to H&M to return some earrings and decided to buy another pair.

When she walked out, she said two loss prevention officers approached her, accused of her stealing the earrings and embarrassed her in front of people.

"He's like, 'That's it. You're going to jail.' I'm like, 'but for what?'" asked Daniela.

Daniela says she was very upset by a comment made by one of the loss prevention officers — a black male.

"I'm cursing because obviously I have already told him I didn't do anything. I said, 'you should understand where I'm coming from. If you were on the other end of the table, you should understand how they do us these days.' He said, 'Don't pull the race card on me,'" said Taylor.

Daniela says after reviewing security footage, the loss prevention officer realized Daniela had not stolen anything.

Although she says the loss prevention officer apologized to her, she wants more than that from H&M.

"They need to be better at who they hire. They really need to look into people and do the extensive training that needs to be done," said Taylor.

H&M released the following statement:

"We are aware of the incident that took place in our Pembroke Lakes Mall location. Unfortunately this was a misunderstanding and we are sorry. We have since let go of the third party security company that was involved and we are reviewing our internal procedures to make sure this type of incident does not happen again and that our routines are properly followed. We will be getting in touch with the customer to follow up on the steps we have taken."

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