A Tempe, Arizona Starbucks ejected six police officers on the Fourth of July because a customer complained that they “did not feel safe” in their presence, according to Fox 10 Phoenix.
“The barista asked the officers to move out of the customer’s line of sight or to leave,” according to the Tempe Officers Association Twitter account.
2/4 and stood together having a cup of coffee before their long 4th of July shift. They were approached by a barista, who knew one of the officers by name, because he is a regular at that location. The barista said that a customer “did not feel safe” because of the police…
— Tempe Officers Association (@ToaAz) July 6, 2019
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4/4.. at all was offensive. Unfortunately, such treatment has become all too common in 2019.
We know this is not a national policy at Starbucks Corporate and we look forward to working collaboratively with them on this important dialogue.— Tempe Officers Association (@ToaAz) July 6, 2019
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Rob Ferrao, president of TAO, says that this type of thing is becoming more frequent.
“It’s become accepted to not trust or to see police and think that we’re not here to serve you, and again, it goes back to — we take great pride of the level of customer service we provide to citizens, and to be looked at as feeling unsafe when you have law enforcement around you is somewhat perplexing to me,” he told Fox 10 in a phone interview.
Don’t appreciate @Starbucks asking our #Tempe cops to leave your establishment on the #4thofjuly2019. Several of those cops are #veterans who fought for this country! #ZeroRespect pic.twitter.com/oGaDKhlYX3
— Tempe Officers Association (@ToaAz) July 5, 2019
According to a Starbucks spokesman, “We have a deep respect for the Tempe Police and their service to the community,” adding “We’ve reached out to the Tempe Police Department and Tempe Officers Association to better understand what happened and apologize. We want everyone in our stores to feel welcomed and the incident described is not indicative of what we want any of our customers to feel in our stores.”
Of course, this follows months of ‘sensitivity training’ after a Philadelphia Starbucks manager had two black men arrested for simply sitting in a store without placing an order.
Homeless people shooting up in the bathroom on the other hand – no problem!
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