I don't get it, how does depositing a check become a police matter?
PS: It says cash first and deposit further down, I'm assuming deposit must be the correct part.
Edit: PPS. I know there is racism and this happens in USA, but the amount of amateur hour from the Banks procedure, to the people working there and the police responding to a non issue is mind numbing for a person coming from Denmark, where banks are run professionally, and the police almost is too.
Racist bank employees made it a police matter when they assumed he was passing a fraudulent check and called to have the guy arrested for being a negro in possession of money.
Fucking hell, this. I used to live in a shit hole conservative state in a shit hole conservative town with a university. My buddy from New Jersey comes to visit. He's a 5'5 Jamaican man. We take him out one night and two people, each on a separate occasion, asked him if he played football for the university.
I just don't get how the amateur hour process is allowed to continue?
It’s the same generation in both images. The first image is Elizabeth Eckford, one of the first black students to enroll in Little Rock high school following desegregation in 1957. Notice that she’s surrounded by a crowd of angry white students. The second image is Donald Trump’s primary voting base.
How many generations ago was brutal, undiluted systemic racism accepted? ‘Bout 2.5. it takes a while to fix, given that segregationists instilled such strong feelings into their progeny. It’s easier to break something than to fix it, most especially when someone is actively working to obstruct the repair. It takes 2 seconds to pop a tire and 20 minutes to change.
This is reality I know, but it's unacceptable, this kind of racism needs to be punished harder, to make racists understand their behavior is unacceptable.
If a bank employee KNOWS someone is trying to deposit a fraudulent check, they should call the police to arrest that person instead of letting them leave and try again.
But they had no evidence, merely the racist assumption that a black man could not have come by that much money legally.
This is basically correct. If the check is from that particular bank they can easily call the person who wrote it and ask "did you write this check?". But no one would do that for a deposit. If you work at a bank you can recognize your own checks just by looking at them.
If the check is for a different bank and looks really fake, a bank might not deposit it and ask some questions about it ("who gave it to you?"). This is to protect depositors from fake check scams ("deposit this check and give me back 10%"). If the person really wanted to deposit it, the bank employees might recommend cashing it at the bank listed on the check. They will know if it's real.
I actually saw a similar situation to the one here. A black non-customer had a large denomination check that looked different from normal checks. After some questions, he said he got it from a settlement. It turned out that the check was fine, the check design was just not used often. Total time was like 20 minutes to verify the check, open the account, and deposit it. He said he would bring his next settlement check next time.
Welcome to the origin of the “it’s illegal to [x] while black” meme. It’s illegal to drive while black. It’s illegal to have money while black. It’s illegal to eat chips while black. It’s illegal to sleep in your own bed while black. Etc, etc, etc… All of these are examples of times black people have been profiled and discriminated against for no reason other than the color of their skin.
First I heard was driving while black, because black people are stopped 10 times more frequently than whites. I know the term.
I was just pointing out that being racist and discriminating based on color is de facto illegal, while doing x while black is not.
That's what makes matters so complicated to try to address - e.g. sometimes cops are racist themselves, directly, but other times they are not and yet still any race-blind application of "enforcement" is going to merely reinforce the racist policies of society.
Yes, and being a banker and policeman while racist, which is actually illegal. Being black remains legal despite Republicans best efforts.
USA is an extremely scary place, especially for people of any color other than white.
I'm a white guy in Texas. I keep being told I should be scared of all the Hispanic people coming over because there will be a taco truck on every corner and someone will sell me tamales during the week of winter we get.
Well ok. They're only used interchangeably one way, nobody deposits a check and leaves with the money, but they'll go to "cash a check" and deposit it.
Well I cannot say what's common in USA, but the literal meaning of cash seems to me to be getting literal cash in your hand. While deposit is to deposit it into an account, for withdrawal later, like when the check is cleared.
I'm guessing if people use those terms interchangeably, they are in error half the time.
IDK practices in USA, but here some checks can be cashed immediately when they are from trusted parties, like a bankers check, but AFAIK you still need to have an account with the bank to cash it.
That said both cash and checks are extremely rare here now, almost everything and everybody have gone electronic.
Paying cash above about 8K USD or 50k DKK is actually illegal now, to prevent money laundering.