2 Men Arrested & Jailed Because They Were Black At A Philly Starbucks! #iShitUNot (Video)
by Tj Sotomayor April 15, 2018 0 commentsBlack While Brewing!
By: Tommy “Tj” Sotomayor
Well this did not go the way the people at Starbucks planned it to go nor did it go the way I thought a situation like this would go, so who is really at fault here?
Last Thursday, 2 men walked into a Starbucks and were unceremoniously removed and arrested by philly PD who were called by the manager of Starbucks because he felt like the men, who were black, were taking up a table while refusing to order something. What happened after this has made the eyes of the nation turn to this small store!
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If you drink coffee, the one thing that you know is Starbucks rebranded coffee and made it cool to spend 5 bucks on a cup! Starbucks also made it cool for yuppies and business professionals alike could go inside of a Starbucks, get coffee and free WiFi so you can sit there for hours, sip and work but for some reason this wasnt OK for these 2 black men to do
Starbucks issues apology after video of arrest in Philly store goes viral
Starbucks has issued an apology for the incident that led to the arrest of two men at a Philadelphia location earlier this week.
The company released the following statement Saturday:
“We apologize to the two individuals and our customers and are disappointed this led to an arrest. We take these matters seriously and clearly have more work to do when it comes to how we handle incidents in our stores. We are reviewing our policies and will continue to engage with the community and the police department to try to ensure these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.”
Video of that arrest, which took place on Thursday, was posted to Twitter. It now has more than 2 million views and has prompted an internal investigation within the Philadelphia Police Department.
The caption of the video reads: “The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything. They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing.”
In the video, you can hear the friend who was meeting them ask officers what’s going on.
“What did they get called for?” he asked. “Because there are two black guys sitting here meeting me? Tell me, what did they do?”
Other customers then chimed in.
“They didn’t do anything, I saw the entire thing,” a person off-camera said.
Starbucks responded to the tweet, saying “we’re reviewing the incident with our partners, law enforcement, and customers to determine what took place and led to this unfortunate result.”
Philadelphia police also tweeted that they were aware of the incident at the location at Spruce and South 18th streets and they were conducting an internal investigation.
Saturday we spoke with the two men’s attorney Lauren Wimmer.
She says her clients were innocently waiting for a 3rd person to conduct a business meeting.
Wimmer said, “It’s what thousands of people do every single day across the country. Starbucks has cultivated this community where people can meet there whether you enjoy coffee or not.”
She tells us it was the manager at the Starbucks who called the police, and that her clients weren’t doing anything wrong.
She also adds the two men are traumatized and this is an egregious case of racism.
“In the end, this is a case of about race and companies like Starbucks will have to held accountable for discriminatory practices,” she said.
Wimmer says after she made some calls to authorities her clients were released from jail by 2 am Friday morning.
Saturday afternoon Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross delivered a statement, which was streamed live on the department’s Facebook page.
Ross said the department’s internal investigation revealed the officers who responded to the scene acted appropriately, and in accordance with police guidelines.
“On three different occasions the officers asked the males to leave, politely,” Ross said, “because they were being asked to leave by employees because they were trespassing. Instead, the males continued to refuse. They told the officers they were not leaving.”
At that point, the men were arrested. After they arrived at the police station to be processed, Ross said, authorities were informed that Starbucks did not want to press charges against the men, and so they were released.
Ross added, “As an African-American male, I am very aware of implicit bias. We are committed to fair and unbiased policing, and anything less than that will not be tolerated in this department.”
According to the DA’s office, charges were declined due to a lack of evidence and the men were released from police custody.
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