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Over his shoulder was a night-time security guard, Addo says, “right on me, I mean right on me.”

He asked whether everything was all right. Yes, she said, but didn’t move. She followed him to the cash register, where he paid for his candy and asked what was going on.

“It’s our policy,” Addo says the cashier told him. They get a lot of shoplifters at that hour and need to discourage them.

OK, but there are other people in the store and you’re not standing over them, only me, Addo says he replied. The cashier, who was also the senior person in the store on the overnight shift, advised him to call and complain in the morning.

It took five days, Addo says, but eventually he got to talk to a day manager, who he says apologized for the way he was treated.

All right, he thought. They know there’s a problem and they’re fixing it. I’ll take that.

A month later, in April, Addo stopped in again. Immediately, he says, things started to go wrong. The same security guard began following him around. This time, Addo had his cellphone on him and started taking pictures, about two dozen of them. Eventually, he objected to being shadowed and he asked to speak to the manager on duty.

Addo concedes that things got heated then, beginning with a dispute over his recording the exchange. Officially, he’s likely in the wrong on this; a store can forbid photography and video recording on its own premises.

On the recording, he mainly keeps his voice low but he refuses to co-operate by either leaving or turning his camera off.