Secaucus LA Fitness Fires 3 Employees After Police Called In

SECAUCUS, NJ — The Secaucus LA Fitness has fired three employees after those employees called the Secaucus police over an incident involving two African-American male patrons this past Monday.

Secaucus police confirmed they were called to the LA Fitness on Monday, April 16 for a complaint of a patron refusing to scan in.

NJ.com reported that the three employees who handled the encounter — and who called police — have been fired by LA Fitness. Gym employees would not confirm that to Patch on Wednesday, but one unnamed gym employee did say the three are no longer employed at the gym.

One of the two men, Tshyrad Oates, posted four videos of the encounter to Facebook, which gathered more than 20,000 "likes" and over 45,000 shares. In the video, Oates claims he and his friend were victims of racial profiling. He said his friend signed in with a membership pass, and he signed in with a guest pass, but the club employees asked them to sign in again.

"(My friend) felt racially profiled and embarrassed by the harassment of this LA Fitness employee in front of other members at the gym," wrote Oates on Facebook. "We continued our workout and next thing we know 2 police men show up questioning us on why we were their with no memberships, we explained to them about our guest pass and rescanned my friend’s member tag and it resulted in current active statues."

Oates said the gym manager, who has now since been fired, told them they were permanently banned from the Secaucus LA Fitness.

Photo by Carly Baldwin/Patch