A security officer hit a woman in the face and arrested her after she reportedly demanded reparation at an Ohio Target checkout line. “This is my Rosa Parks moment,” Karen Ivery, 37, told police officers following a disagreement inside a Blue Ash Target last year, according to a New York Post story.
Ivery’s police statement occurred after a dramatic episode in the store in which she sought to settle her $1,000 grocery bill by demanding restitution from the store’s management. According to the police report, when checking out her goods, Ivery asked the Target cashier to speak with a manager, bringing up repayment multiple times during their meeting.
Before becoming a manager, Ivery requested reparation before becoming angry and walking “aggressively” toward the manager. “Ivery kept berating her about reparations and her privileged life” while walking toward the manager, the report said.
Zach Cotter, a 28-year-old loss prevention officer, then approached Ivery in an attempt to settle the situation, telling the enraged customer to calm down and leave the store. The loss prevention officer’s intervention, however, only made Ivery angrier, with the yelling customer apparently pursuing Cotter to his office.
According to a report and video of the incident, as Cotter tried to close the door to his office behind him, Ivery followed and forced her way in, ending in the loss prevention officer giving a punch that landed firmly on the customer’s face. Surveillance footage from the confrontation showed Cotter landing the punch that knocked Ivery to the ground.
When police arrived on the scene, they examined the video and found that Ivery was the “aggressor” in the incident, and she was arrested. “Ivery was confrontational with officers on the scene and didn’t want to explain her actions,” the police report said.
Bodycam footage from Ivery’s contact with police showed the customer comparing her situation to that of Rosa Parks telling officers she was summoning the manager “so we could have a larger conversation about how money works, and how the provision works, and how it’s been working in our community in a very wrong way.”
Ivery was finally sentenced to one day in prison and a $110 fine for disorderly behavior.