Security cam caught UPS driver’s ‘racist’ rant as he declined to deliver Latino man’s Christmas package
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When a UPS driver walked onto the front porch of a Milwaukee home last month, the man eyed the package’s recipient name: Hugo Aviles.
Moments later, without ringing the doorbell or knocking, he began writing a failed delivery attempt notice and explained why Aviles, a Latino police officer, would not get his package.
“Now you don’t get f----- nothing cause you’re a stupid m---------- who can’t read and write and speak the f------ English language,” the man said in a Dec. 17 recording of the incident, which was captured by Aviles’s security camera and posted to social media.
On Tuesday, after activists in Milwaukee held a news conference urging the company to take action, UPS announced that the driver, whom the company did not name, has been fired.
“There is no place in any community for racism, bigotry or hate,” a spokesman with the company told NBC News . “This is very serious and we promptly took action, terminating the driver’s employment.”
“We just want to make sure that UPS is serious and wants to make amends with the Latino community,” Shirley Aviles, the man’s mother told The Washington Post in an interview late Tuesday.
Video of the Dec. 17 incident shows the unidentified UPS driver approaching Aviles’s front door at around 7 p.m. After his rant, the driver pasted the failed delivery note on the door, shaking his head in apparent disapproval.
Although the man did not explicitly name Aviles in his “racist remarks,” Shirley Aviles told The Post that she has no doubt the driver was referring to her son, whose name was printed on the box.
“He’s never met my son,” the 45-year-old mother said. “He’s basing it solely on the Latino surname. … He meant it. He sent it back. It was malicious.”
Hours later, Aviles, 23, who was home sleeping when the delivery man arrived and had been expecting the package containing a Christmas present, awoke to notifications from his Ring security camera. (Ring is an Amazon product. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) That’s when he saw the recording of the driver’s remarks and shared it with his mother, who posted it to her social media.
The following day, through a relative who works at UPS, the company apologized and said they wanted to chat, Shirley Aviles said. She declined to talk until re-watching the video and organizing a list of demands.
The package finally arrived three days after Christmas, but only after her son had to call to follow up again, she said.
Then, for nearly three weeks, Aviles said the family heard nothing from UPS. On Tuesday, the Aviles family and local activists held a news conference demanding the driver be dismissed and urging the company to invest more in diversity training.
Darryl Morin, the president of Forward Latino, a nonprofit that aims to help Latinos pursue the American Dream, accused UPS of lacking interest in investigating the event or correcting the driver’s behavior.
“As such, this is no longer an issue of a single rogue driver, but one of UPS’s failure to commit to operational excellence and more importantly, UPS management’s failure to combat hate within their company,” Morin said at the news conference.
Hours later, the company called Morin to announce the driver had been dismissed last month, he told The Post.
Shirley Aviles said she hopes the video can become a “teaching opportunity” so others can avoid making assumptions about Latinos.
“It can’t be that somebody can make such an assumption just by looking at an individual’s surname,” she said. “I thought we were so past that. There are so many of us Latinos who were born here. It’s ridiculous to think that people who think we don’t speak English because of our last name still exist.”
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Now you don’t get f----- nothing cause you’re a stupid m---------- who can’t read and write and speak the f------ English language
I wonder if the driver knows the meaning of the English language word ‘irony’.
Don’t get nothing would mean you get something ... in the English language.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
I read this article this morning. It's incredible how some people think. Or in this guy's case - don't think.
I don’t have a Ring doorbell myself, but I do know how obvious they are. One would think that somebody whose job involves standing in front of doors all day would hold their racist tongue when standing in front of a camera and microphone with a neon blue light around it. No sympathy here.
I've considered getting one, but haven't due to how easy it is for law enforcement to get video without homeowner consent. I don't have a problem with LE getting video, but they should ask first giving cause as to why they want it.
Same here. Someone gave us an echo Alexa thing a few years ago. No thank you. It’s basically just a smart hot mic that listens to your personal conversations for suggestions of shit to bombard you with ads. I have no doubt that LE uses it covertly as well, to know where and when to find stupid drug dealers and pull them over for a “lane violation”. Sounds conspiratorial but there have been officers that admit that such tactics are true. Dystopia is upon us.
I have echo smart speakers in the house, but mostly what they hear is the tv as it's right next to the speaker. LOL! Facebook is worse than anything Amazon can think of right now for listening to conversations (on smart phones) and "suggesting" purchases.
I’ve never even had a Facebook / Instagram / tik tok / MySpace / whatever account and even I get ads for some of the most random shit. My wife will say “I want to replace the bath mat upstairs”, and the next day ads for bath mats show up in my newsfeeds. I absolutely hate the advertising industry, to the extent that I will purposely not buy any products that are pitched to me without me asking, or that constantly get flashed in front of me. The worst offender right now is Car Shield, whose commercials I must hear and see 50 times a day now. With an advertising budget like that, how can they afford to actually cover your repair bill? And then there’s the pharmaceutical companies - good lord. Please stop informing me not to take your drug if I’m allergic to your drug. Use that fat advertising budget to do something useful, like cure diseases instead of treating them with the latest expensive patented version of affordable drugs that work equally well.
The deliveryman is an asshole.
UPS is perhaps worse. This should be an automatic process:
- register complaint
- verify complaint (watch the fucking video!)
- take appropriate disciplinary action (fire the asshole)
Duh...
Makes you wonder how far up the chain at UPS you need to go before common sense trumps racist apathy.
I had a Fedex delivery yesterday, and the guy came across as a huge asshole. The package weighed 150 lb and he had to use a hand cart and truck lift to get it off the truck. I was on a conference call when he rang my doorbell (without a mask) so it took a minute to get to the door. Apparently he was miffed about the tiny delay so the whole process was gruff and unprofessional. It truly makes me unsympathetic to what Bezos has done to the shipping industry. The Prime guys have always been cordial to me.
Yeah, we are in a post racial environment.../s
At least he won’t be drawing unemployment on our dime. Fired.
This is an example of what is known as "everyday racism".
Ironic that the house was the home of a police officer.