Philadelphia Police Chief Apologizes for Starbucks Incident
April 19 2018 - 4:55PM
Dow Jones News
By Scott Calvert
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross offered an apology
Thursday to two black men who were arrested last week at a
Starbucks, an incident that has renewed a national discussion on
how police and businesses treat African-Americans.
"It is me who in large part made most of the situation worse
than it was, " Mr. Ross said at a news conference. "So for that, it
is my sincere apology to those two men, and even to these officers
and to the other people around this city who I have failed in a
variety of ways on this incident."
The commissioner said he regretted initially saying the officers
who arrested the men did nothing wrong, though he defended their
actions in other ways and denied that race had affected the police
response.
"I should have said the officers acted within the scope of the
law, and not that they didn't do anything wrong," he said.
"Messaging is important, and I failed miserably in this
regard."
The department has a new policy for how it will handle similar
situations, he said.
A Starbucks manager had called police when the two men allegedly
refused to leave the cafe after they were denied use of the
restroom because they hadn't purchased anything. A video of the men
being handcuffed by police went viral online last weekend, and
Starbucks apologized.
The incident sparked protests outside the Center City cafe and
calls for a company boycott. The manager who called police no
longer works there, Starbucks has said. The chain plans to close
all of its more than 8,000 U.S. company-owned stores for an
afternoon next month to provide employees with antiracial-bias
education.
On Thursday the two men, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson,
shared their story on national television, including on ABC's Good
Morning America. The men, who say they were ejected from the
Starbucks while waiting for a business associate, weren't charged.
Their lawyer didn't respond to a request for comment.
Commissioner Ross said he didn't initially know that Starbucks,
unlike most businesses, doesn't require people to make a purchase
to linger at a table.
"I was under the belief that people went there and they spent
hours and hours, but that the expectation was that they bought
something first," he said. He said he believes the officers who
responded also didn't know about such a policy and said if they had
known, the episode would have turned out differently.
Starbucks didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on
whether that is the company's policy.
In light of what the commissioner believes to be the company's
policy, he said, he now understands why the two men were "appalled"
when the manager asked them to leave.
But Commissioner Ross, who is African-American, said he didn't
think race affected how police handled the incident, though he said
he understood the "optics" and that he has seen racism firsthand.
"Based on what these officers responded to, I just don't believe
that was the case here," he said.
The arresting officer is "absolutely mortified," he said.
Nothing in the officer's background "suggests he's a guy who goes
out to harass anyone, he was just trying to do his job," the
commissioner said.
Commissioner Ross also gave officers high marks for how the
officers handled themselves. He said there is no evidence of any
verbal or physical abuse, and he said the officers tried to "quell"
the situation, which lasted more than 10 minutes.
In response to the episode, he said the department has drawn up
a policy for cases where a business calls police about a
trespasser. The goal is to avoid being "manipulated by any employee
into extracting anyone from a business that shouldn't be," he
said.
He said police will clarify from the outset whether management
intends to press charges. And he said to help de-escalate a
situation, police might call in officers who have
crisis-intervention training. The department hasn't yet released
the policy.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 19, 2018 16:40 ET (20:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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