Bank employee calls police on black man trying to cash a check from his new job

By BRIAN NIEMIETZ
DEC 18, 2018 | 5:50 PM

An employee at an Ohio bank called the police on a black man who’d just started a new job and was trying to cash his check.

Paul McCowns, 30, told NBC affiliate Cleveland News 19 that bank tellers at Huntington Bank in Brooklyn refused to honor the $1,082 check he’d just received from his new gig with an electric company, even after he provided two forms of I.D. and a fingerprint.

“It was highly embarrassing,” according to McCowns, who said tellers tried phoning his employer to verify the check was legit, but his boss didn’t pick up the call. McCowns’ check was for 64 hours he’d worked at the job he started three weeks earlier.

Accepting that the tellers weren’t going to help him, McCowns decided to leave, not knowing a bank employee had called 911.

-snip-

A black man tried to cash his paycheck. The bank called the cops.

By Michael Brice-Saddler December 18 at 3:58 PM

Three weeks into his new job, Paul McCowns was ready to cash his first paycheck.

There were no issues when he first entered a Huntington Bank branch in Brooklyn, Ohio, on Dec. 1. The bank asked for two forms of ID, which McCowns provided, he told Cleveland 19 News. An employee then asked for a fingerprint, which is standard procedure for non-Huntington customers attempting to cash checks, according to the bank.

But soon, bank employees began to question the legitimacy of his check, which was worth just over $1,000, said McCowns, who is African American. They called his employer, an electric company, numerous times to confirm, but his employer did not answer. The bank turned him away, he said.

Moments later, he was handcuffed and put into the back of a police cruiser.

“I get in my truck, and the squad car [pulls] in front of me, and he says, ‘Get out the car,’ ” McCowns, 30, told Cleveland 19 News. An employee had called Brooklyn police, who detained McCowns until they verified with his employer that the check was real.

-snip-