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The racial profiling accusations Macy’s has been facing of late has blanketed the major department store chain in scandal. Now, a former NYPD police officer claims in a lawsuit that she too was profiled because of her race and lost her job as a result.

Jenny Mendez, 29, is suing Macy’s after she says the store’s security team profiled and arrested her for shoplifting, and saying the staff lied by saying she confessed to the theft. Mendez filed a $40 million lawsuit last week in Bronx Civil Court for the racial profiling and for the arrest that cost her her NYPD job. Mendez had only been on the force for under year when she was dropped from her position.

Mendez was was acquitted of the charges in September and at the trial, the Macy’s security person admitted on the stand that she lied and fingered the cop for a crime she didn’t commit.

“It was one wrong on top of another that happened to Jenny Mendez,”Mendez’s attorney Phillip Karasyk told DNAinfo New York. “First she was wrongly accused and then she lost the job she loved, and that wrong should be made right.”

The incident took place last year in November during the festive Black Friday shopping period. Mendez, then a rookie cop still on probation, was shopping at the New York store with her mother. After trying on clothing and placing unpaid items into a shopping bag, she paid for her items with her mother.

After discovering the bag was missing and reporting it to the store, Mendez and her mother were detained and police were called. The missing bag was found on another shoplifter, the lawsuit states, and also adds the Mendez was profiled as a thief simply because of her race.

[DNAinfo]

Photo: Macy’s