Starbucks caught the media’s attention again, when a store in Tempe, Arizona kicked out a bunch of police officers for the crime of being police offices.
Cops today have difficult and thankless jobs out there and the least we can do is show them the same respect. In-fact, any customer deserves respect when he visits a retail outlets like Starbucks.
Well, Fox News reported that some police officers in Tempe, Arizona, say they were asked to leave a Starbucks coffee shop on the 4th of July because a customer complained they “did not feel safe” with the cops present, according to reports.
Five police officers were drinking coffee at the Starbucks location prior to their shift beginning when the store’s barista asked them to move out of the complaining customer’s line of sight or else leave, the Tempe Officers Association wrote in a series of tweets.
President of the police union, Rob Ferraro, told FOX 10 of Phoenix that such treatment of police officers seems to be happening more often these days.
“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,” Ferraro told the station in a phone interview.
The police union also posted a series of tweets about the incident.
“This treatment of public safety workers could not be more disheartening,” the police union wrote. “While the barista was polite, making such a request at all was offensive. Unfortunately, such treatment has become all too common in 2019.”
A Starbucks spokesman told the Arizona Republic the company was still gathering information about what happened.
“We have a deep respect for the Tempe Police and their service to the community,” spokesman Reggie Borges told the newspaper.
“We’ve reached out to the Tempe Police Department and Tempe Officers Association to better understand what happened and apologize,” he said. “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.”
