Dairy Queen shut down a restaurant in Illinois after police said its owner “proudly admitted” to using a racial slur against a customer last week.Owner to undergo sensitivity training
edit: this is a better version...
Donald Trump’s election to the presidency is apparently giving license to people all across the country to express their racist feelings. And while you are entitled to your opinion and First Amendment right, you’re also entitled to face the consequences of that opinion.
That’s the case of a Dairy Queen franchise owner who let his bigotry get the better of him. A woman in Zion, Illinois recently went to a Dairy Queen in the city with her children. According to her, when she ordered her food and didn’t receive everything, she went back to the restaurant to get a $5 refund.
The simple request apparently sparked up owner James Crichton. He in-turn called 21-year-old Deianeira Ford and her children “blacks” and other racial slurs. This then reportedly caused Ford’s three-year-old daughter to ask what “black” meant.
Ford would later ask for the franchise owner’s name. First he told her it was “Bill Clinton” and then he supposedly said it was “Donald Trump.” Then he told Ford to go back from where she came from. A police officer would arrive on scene and confirm the series of events strangely because Crichton boasted that he made such terrible remarks.
“(Crichton) boastfully told me he would be happy to go to jail over the issue and proudly admitted to calling Ford a slur,” the officer relayed in his report. “He added that he was ‘fed up with black people.’” The report also states that Crichton used "black" freely in describing African Americans.
A Black Lives Matter protester later showed up to the Dairy Queen franchise to confront Crichton about his remarks. The owner then called the police and the same officer responded to the scene. Crichton claimed that “nothing racial took place” in the earlier hours even though he previously told the same officer it did.
“He did not recognize me as the officer who spoke to him this morning and I reminded him that he already admitted to me what he did,” the officer wrote. “He continued to contradict his story about this morning to me several more times and was becoming angered that I did not believe him.”
James Crichton later told the Lake County News-Sun that the whole thing was “99 percent lies” and “blown out of proportion.”
The Zion community has since rallied around Ford. Both the police chief and mayor have reached out. Chief Stephen Dumyahn said he was “disgusted and discouraged” by Crichton's comments.
Dairy Queen also issued a statement and plans on stripping Crichton’s franchise license. “We do not in any way condone his behavior or language. It is not what our brand stands for and is not representative of a DQ or its franchisee community,” it read. “The actions of this franchisee are inexcusable, reprehensible and unacceptable.”
