I had an incident happen to me at a local grocery store called Tops Friendly Market. The explanation is in the e-mail that I sent out to everyone in the office, and some folks in the community. Here goes:
Hello Everyone!
Have you, or your consumers, or your constituents ever gone to a grocery store and found that you couldn’t get inside because the poles surrounding the store were to narrow for your wheelchair to get through, and the gate was locked?
This happens more often than we realize, especially in economically depressed, or poor neighborhoods. What the stores are trying to do is prevent the theft of the shopping carts, which they say are quite expensive. One way of preventing theft is to put closely spaced bars around the store, and install a gate in the midst of the bars so that someone who uses a wheelchair can enter. They then assign someone to watch the gate.
The problem arises when the person assigned to the gate is not there to open it, and the person using a wheelchair has to wait for someone to come open it. This happened to me recently. I went to the Tops Store located at Clinton and Upper Falls Blvd around 9:00 am on Saturday, December 6, 2008. When I arrived, the gate was locked. My partner went into the store to look for someone while I waited in the cold. I watched as people who were able to walk slipped between the bars and entered the store, while I had to wait. The unfairness of this hit me on a number of levels-I, a middle-aged African-American woman in a wheelchair, waiting at the Jim Crow entrance.
When I was finally able to get in, I spoke with the store manager, who explained that the person who was supposed to open the gate called in sick at the last moment, and the person who replaced him went and did some other duty. I invited him to meet with us to come up with some ideas on how to achieve access fairly. I believe that access and security are NOT mutually exclusive. People with disabilities should have real access to businesses. Sometimes, mere accommodations do not work. Access is the key to equality!
Representatives from Tops will be here at CDR on Monday, December 22, 2008, at 9:30 am. Join us to let them know how important true access is to you, and give them some ideas on how to make this happen. Let me know if you’ll be able to come. Contact me at 585-546-7510 or acameron@rochestercdr.org. We are located at 497 State Street, and are accessible to folks who use wheelchairs.
Together, we can create change!
Thank you,
Anita
RA’s note: We have had some awful weather in Rochester over the weekend, so the meeting date has been changed to Monday, December 29, 2008 at 10:00 am at CDR. We will be meeting with Robin Perrone with Customer Service, and Rocco Marcellino, the store manager whom I’d previously spoken to.
You know, there’s something about all this that gets to me. In talking with people at CDR, and in the community, as well as the folks at Tops, this issue has been going on for a long time, and the way that other grocery stores have dealt with this is to move out of the area. Here in Rochester, there is really only one grocery store that people can go to in the Downtown area, and it is that Tops store where I had the incident. As noted in the letter above, the corralling of grocery carts typically occurs in low income neighborhoods, though not always. There is a Tops store near CDR that doesn’t have the cart corrals. What bothers me is when everyone keeps saying that they have to do it that way, or they’ll have to move out of the area. Tops officials have told me that the cart are expensive, about 6,00 dollars apiece, and so they can’t afford to lose them. Further, they say that each time one of their shopping carts is found by the city, they are fined. Therefore, they have to corral them. Ok, I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is that they have chosen a security solution that inhibits access to the store by folks who use wheelchairs. They feel that it is cheaper to have the gate there, and pay someone to be there, then to adopt a security method that may cost a bit more, but is more effective, and won’t impede access. What is especially galling is that Tops is crying poor, but they have 158 million dollars available for renovations!
One of the things that we hope to accomplish is to brainstorm ways to come up with a security system that is cost effective, yet accessible to people who use wheelchairs. Barring that, the only thing that we can resort to is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has several sections related to this issue:
Title III of the ADA governs public accommodations and services operated by private entities. This includes shops, hotels, theaters, gas stations, and restaurants, and other businesses. Section 12182 of Title III states that:
“No individual shall be discriminated against on the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations of any place of public accommodation by any person who owns, leases (or leases to), or operates a place of public accommodation.”
“An individual or entity shall not, directly or through contractual or other arrangements, utilize standards or criteria or methods of administration
(i) that have the effect of discriminating on the basis of disability; or
(ii) that perpetuate the discrimination of others who are subject to common administrative control.”
For purposes of subsection (a) of this section, discrimination includes
(i) the imposition or application of eligibility criteria that screen out or tend to screen out an individual with a disability or any class of individuals with disabilities from fully and equally enjoying any goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations, unless such criteria can be shown to be necessary for the provision of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations being offered
I was told by the Department Of Justice that this ADA provision could be applied to our case, particularly since the accommodations offered are ineffective. I know that in at least one other city, people with disabilities have prevailed in this issue.
More to come…