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Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer and Councilman-at-Large Ravi Bhalla have denounced “hate speech” after a video of a 9th Cloud Smoke and Vape Supply employee went on a tirade using “insulting racial slurs,” which the company has apologized for.
“Move your **** you ****ing immigrant! … Get the **** out of here! Take your **** back to Union City,” a Vape Van employee screamed at an unnamed man at an undisclosed location on Washington Street.
“Go back to your ****ing country, you ****ing immi[grant]!,” he screamed, as the X-rated tired continued for around two minutes.
After the Facebook video, posted by user Alan Slaughter, reached over a 125,000 views and over 1,000 shares, Zimmer and Bhalla decided to chime in.
On their Instagram page, 9th Cloud posted an apology, stating that the verbal exchange lasted for around 10 minutes and the video only shows the final portion of the argument.
“As many of you may know, footage has been posted on the internet and social media platforms of a verbal altercation between our team and a party/family on the date of May 6th,” they began.
“The verbal exchange soon escalated against our favor. We regret to admit insulting racial slurs were made by a member of our team. The exchange from start to finish went on for about 10 minutes, the recording shows the last few minutes.”
“We sincerely apologize to all and anyone who is a part of the family, and to all who may have found our actions offensive. This public statement is in no way a justification for any of our actions. We are taking full responsibility for this situation and will act in any way possible to assure anything like this does not happen again.”
In a separate post, their Instagram page also shows a private message exchange between them and Slaughter, where he refused to remove the video.