Guilty Plea: Racist White Man Threatened Black Amazon Driver

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Amazon Prime delivery truck making neighborhood deliveries.

Source: UCG / Getty

We all know that delivery drivers have many hazards to deal with on the job—loose dogs, cranky customers, reckless drivers, bad traffic and plenty of other things that can make a day on the job stressful. Black delivery drivers have it even worse because they’re constantly dealing with things like loose dogs, cranky customers, reckless drivers, bad traffic—and angry and violent white people who don’t want Black people in their neighborhoods even when they’re just minding their own business while trying to earn an honest living.

Meet 64-year-old John Vincentini, who recently pleaded guilty to bias intimidation over yet another incident that involved white people and their abject inability to leave Black people alone.

On Sept. 5, 2022, in Lacey, New Jersey, Vincentini spotted a Black Amazon driver in his neighborhood, and like a true Klansman with Karen tendencies, he decided to follow the driver into a cul-de-sac to harass him. To Vincentini’s credit, he didn’t engage in obvious racism and then lie and say he was just a concerned citizen looking after his neighborhood, or that the guy he found suspicious just happened to be Black, but that didn’t have anything to do with the harassment because he doesn’t see color. Instead, Vincentini said with his entire white supremacist chest that the reason he was confronting the driver was that he’s racist, his neighborhood is racist and Black people don’t belong there.

“What are you doing in my neighborhood, don’t you know this is a racist neighborhood,” Vincentini told the unnamed driver, according to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by Patch. He also reportedly asked the driver, “Do you want me to get into my car, get my rifle, and blow your brains off?”

The affidavit also said that after the driver drove away, Vincentini followed the driver for a “short period of time” before pulling into a driveway on a neighboring street.

Again, this is a unique hazard experienced by Black people who have jobs delivering things for companies. Sometimes the incident only involves racist customers blocking Black delivery people from entering their homes, but other times, it involves a situation that is far more deadly. (That’s right, the best-case scenario Black drivers can hope for is that they only have to deal with racial profiling, not racial profiling that might end in their violent death.)

Last year, a Black woman who drives for Amazon in Texas was attacked by a rabid Karen, who was caught on camera physically assaulting her. A few months before that incident, an armed Karen in South Carolina was arrested for holding a Black woman delivering newspapers at gunpoint after stalking the driver by following her around from neighborhood to neighborhood because she was “terrified” that the Black woman was “stalking the neighborhood,” which was similar to another case in which FedEx worker D’Monterrio Gibson was shot at by white father and son, who, fortunately, weren’t successful in lynching an innocent Black man like the ones who murdered Amaud Arbery. In fact, outside of Arbery, all of the aforementioned victims of white vigilantes who target Black people faired better than the Black woman who was shot and killed by a white man in Ohio while she was driving for Uber.

As for Vincentini, his seething racism wasn’t the only thing he pleaded guilty to, and, ironically, it was an Amazon delivery that compounded his legal woes.

From Patch:

Then, on March 15, 2024, residents reported to Lacey police that a repurposed Amazon delivery box that had marijuana in it was delivered to their doorstep, Billhimer said.

Investigation found that Vincentini was responsible for delivering the box, authorities said.

On March 21, detectives executed a court-authorized search warrant on the Vincentinis home. They seized about 10 pounds of marijuana, 15 marijuana plants, drug paraphernalia associated with the packaging and distribution of narcotics, two assault firearms, a rifle style BB gun, and about $150,000 in cash, authorities said.

Both he and his wife, Karen Vincentini, were taken into custody, Billhimer said. Both have been sitting in Ocean County Jail since, and Karen Vincentini’s charges remain pending.

(Sorry, but Vincentini’s wife literally being named “Karen” is a little too on-the-nose to even call it irony.)

So, along with the bias intimidation charge, Vincentini also pleaded guilty to possession of an assault firearm and possession of marijuana in a quantity of more than one ounce but less than five pounds with intent to distribute. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 19. According to Patch, “the state is seeking a term of five years in New Jersey State Prison for the bias intimidation charge, five years with a 42 month period of parole ineligibility for the assault firearm charge and three years for the narcotics charge. These sentences would run concurrently.”

Be safe out there, Black people. We can count delivering packages for the companies we work for among the things one simply can’t do in peace while Black.

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