Woman claims racial profiling after she’s handcuffed at Collierville Victoria’s Secret

A local woman says she was a victim of racial profiling when handcuffed in a Collierville Victoria's Secret store this week for allegedly shoplifting.

"I was devastated and humiliated," Jovita Jones Cage said Friday. "All these people are in the store shopping and looking at me. I'm crying, I'm terrified, trying to explain I haven't stolen anything."

A Victoria's Secret employee involved is no longer employed there.

The incident occurred Monday morning at the Victoria's Secret at Carriage Crossing. Cage, a Howard University graduate and tutor, said she had first gone to the Victoria's Secret at Saddle Creek in Germantown. She said she asked the clerk to remove the security sensor that had been left on a bra she purchased earlier in Collierville and for which she had the receipt.

Cage said the clerk told her the sensor was one for which that store didn't have the proper equipment to remove, so she would have to take it back to Collierville.

She did so, Cage said, and left the bra at the counter in the Collierville store while looking around. That's when a Collierville officer approached her and handcuffed her, she said, after an employee called and reported she was shoplifting.

"They have everything on camera," Cage said. "I told them to look and they'd see I had not taken anything."

She said she was told the Germantown store had called ahead to alert employees of the Collierville store she might be coming there, but Cage said she checked back with the Germantown store and no one there knew anything about it.

Cage said she the handcuffs were removed after being searched and seeing she didn't have any stolen merchandise. A police report on the Collierville incident was not immediately available.

Victoria's Secret issued a statement apologizing and said that, after investigating, the unidentified employee involved no longer works there. The statement added that the store is meeting with other employees "to reinforce our values and policies."

"Bottom line, we made a mistake, and we do not tolerate this behavior," the statement added.

The company offered Cage a $100 gift card, but Cage said that would not make up for the humiliation, defamation and discrimination she felt she received. She contacted the local NAACP office, which is also looking into the matter.

This is not the first such incident involving the lingerie retailing chain. In 2016, the company fired an employee and apologized to a woman who said she was asked to leave an Alabama store because she was African-American.