We Paid For That Basketball! Why You Called The Law On Us?

A little boy loses his ball after a Nike Store manager accused his parents of shoplifting. 

A California woman with her boyfriend and child went into a Nike store in Santa Monica earlier this month. She bought a Nike Swoosh Mini basketball for the little child. Soon after they leave the leave the store, the manager confronts them. The manager accuses them of shoplifting and called the law on them.

The manager followed them through the store and even flagged cops to approach the family.

The woman films the encounter and posts it on social media and here we go...





TaMiya Dickerson and Joel Stallworth took their child Sammy to the store and like little baby boys, they explore. They saw a basketball and Sammy took it. He was walking around the store with the basketball smiling and enjoying it. They went ahead and paid for the basketball and then continued to shop the Nike store.

After they finished, they left. The manager saw them walk out the store with the baby holding the ball.

She decided to confront them. She asked for a receipt for the ball. They refused. She then started following them through the shopping center and then flagged three on duty Santa Monica police officers.

At this point, Dickerson started to film the encounter.

"This is ridiculous, we purchased this basketball in the store," Dickerson says in the video.

Stallworth throws the ball to the ground in frustration and the manager picks it up.

They finally got it back after showing their receipt to the cops. After the encounter ended, they decided to return the ball and get a refund. The manager was not present when they returned the ball.

Santa Monica Police demand the receipt from paying customers.

The manager never apologized.

"She had zero evidence that I stole anything. She couldn't have evidence because I bought it. She discriminated against me," Stallworth said to the local junk food media.

"[The manager] planted an evil seed in the officer, so as soon as the officer came up to me, he said: 'Sir, give me the stolen ball.'"

Stallworth and Dickerson did hire an attorney to look into the matter.

"What we're hoping to do is to get Nike to have some sort of understanding and meeting of the minds to find out if this was an isolated act, or is this something that is more pervasive within the society of the employees that they hire," said attorney Stephen King.

Just last week, a Black man in San Francisco was accosted by a white man who called 911 on him because he didn't use a call box in an apartment complex. The white man is a tech worker for YouTube.

These incidents add fuel to a fire. The first one to cause all the ruckus was "Permit Patty."

The Nike Manager accused a Black family of shoplifting.

Alison Ettel was the first example of white people calling 911 on Black people minding their business. She called the law on an 8-year old girl who was selling water to get tickets to Disneyland.

Ettel was dropped from her company and she went into hiding. She kicked of a chain of many incidents that we here at Journal de la Reyna covered.

Nike hasn't responded to the concerns.

In related news, Nike was facing backlash over them Betsy Ross shoes. It was the 13 Colonies Stars and was slated for release this month. Former football star and Nike spokesman Colin Kaepernick spoke out against it and said the flag represented a perception of American slavery and was a flagship towards white extremists. Nike decided to scrap the shoe and the far-white was upset over it.

Arizona's Republican governor Doug Ducey got upset over it and threatened to cut funding for its processing plant. A few days later, the junk food media caught him wearing a pair of Nike shoes.