Woman Claims Racial Profiling At Danvers Connors Farm

DANVERS, MA — An Everett woman said she is planning legal action against Connors Farm in Danvers, and one of its employees, after she said she, her sister and their small children were racially profiled and the victim of aggressive behavior earlier this month.

Nicole Pepin, of Everett, told WFXT-TV, that she was pressing charges because of the incident she described as including the employee accusing her and her sister of hiding stolen apples in a stroller, grabbing her arm, and slapping down on her phone when she attempted to document the incident.

Pepin said in a Facebook post that she and her sister were stopped while leaving the farm and accused of stealing apples and hiding them under jackets in the stroller. She said when her sister refused to allow her stroller to be checked, an employee blocked them from leaving and grabbed her arm.

The situation escalated, she said, to include shouting, and an accusation of racism against the employee, who slapped Pepin's phone out of her hand as she attempted to record the situation, according to the woman.

"This man followed us to her car where she literally had to unpack her stroller to get the car seat in the car and fold the stroller," Pepin said in the Facebook post that included the Danvers police report on the confrontation. "This man starts recording us and getting in our face even after being
proven stupid since there was literally nothing in the stroller. So I pulled out my phone and started recording him, calling him a racist and asking for his name. I guess he did not like that and yanked my phone out of my hand slapped my hand then pushed me back."

Pepin posted that she retaliated and started punching the employee, who she said "whipped my phone across the lot."

She said the employee left and she waited for police to take her statement while she was "very much shaken up about the incident."

Patch reached out to Connors Farm about the accusations Monday morning but did not immediately receive a response. This story will be updated if one is received.

This is the second time in three years that a family has claimed racial profiling at Connors Farm.

In September 2021, Danvers town officials publicly apologized to a Cambridge School Committee member and her family — saying "discriminatory behavior has no place in Danvers or any other community" — after Rev. Manikka Bowman said her family was racially profiled at the farm.

Town officials in 2021 said they received a letter from Bowman describing the events, which the letter said included a "racially insensitive comment made by the Danvers police officer who was called to respond."

"The town extends its apologies for the unsettling experience the family had at a local business and for the comment made by a Danvers employee," said the joint statement from then-Town Manager Steve Bartha, Police Chief James Lovell, then-Select Board Chair Gardner Trask and Human Rights and Inclusion Committee Chair and current Select Board member Dutrochet Djoko.

Pepin told WFXT-TV she plans to be in court on Nov. 8 to press charges against the employee and to file a discrimination charge against the farm.