22 March 2018

Department store Myer has been accused of racial profiling after staff called security guards to conduct checks on a teenage Aboriginal boy while he was shopping at its flagship store in Perth's central business district.

Jaylen Garlett, 16, was shopping with his father, Shem, for a shirt for his school ball...when his father briefly left him alone in the change rooms to make a phone call.

Shem Garlett said while he was on the phone he heard a call over the store's intercom for security to attend the men's fitting rooms.

"...I asked the lady at the service desk if everything was OK." "She told me that there was a boy unaccompanied in the change rooms that didn't have anything to try on so she called security."..."I suggested that she was racially profiling as the only thing she would have noticed was a young Aboriginal man, in her mind, appearing to be in the wrong place."...