(NewsNation) — A Colorado supermarket employee who recorded an alleged shoplifting incident was fired from his job.
A King Soopers worker, Santino Burrola, recently captured on video three men fleeing the store he worked at with hundreds of dollars worth of laundry detergent.
“My first instinct was to record,” he told CBS Colorado.
Burrola followed the men outside to their car.
“Really bro? You gotta resort to this? The economy’s not that bad,” Burrola can be heard saying in the video he posted to TikTok. Footage shows Burrola ripping tinfoil that was covering up the vehicle’s license plate.
When he went back to work for his next shift, Burrola was suspended. He was ultimately fired the next week. Now, Burrola feels like he was punished for doing the right thing, CBS Colorado reported.
“I would never let any criminal conduct slide especially when it’s happening right in front of me,” he told the outlet.
At a different King Soopers location in the same state, five employees were fired last year after restraining a man armed with a box cutter from stealing from inside that store. Surveillance video shows how they held the man down until police could arrive. They’ve since appealed their terminations.
“It’s hit my family hard financially, emotionally,” one of the employees, Julie Olivett, said to NewsNation local affiliate KDVR. “I’ve lost my health insurance. I lost all my benefits for something that’s just unfair because I did nothing wrong. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In a statement, King Soopers said it values its hard-working associates, and “nothing could be more important than their safety and that of our customers.”
“We appreciate that in this instance, their actions may have been well intended,” King Soopers said. “However, they violated the very policies that are in place for everyone’s safety. Nothing in our stores is worth sacrificing that core value and their safe return home.”
Other companies have similar policies. A LuluLemon in Georgia fired two employees who yelled at, and chased, two masked people grabbing merchandise at a store in the greater Atlanta area.
Lululemon previously defended the firing, saying the employees were terminated not because they called law enforcement, but because they attempted to catch the suspects themselves.
Lululemon’s CEO said every single employee is trained on that part of company policy when they initially get hired.