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The
officers had visited the store on July 4 and had paid for the
drinks, before one company employee approached them about a
customer not feeling safe because of the police presence, the
Tempe Officers Association said on Twitter.
"This treatment of public safety workers could not be more
disheartening. While the barista was polite, making such a
request at all was offensive," the association added.
Following the incident, users took to Twitter to support the
police, tweeting comments along with the #boycottstarbucks
hashtag.
In an apology https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2019/an-apology-to-the-tempe-police-department
addressed to the Tempe Police Department and posted on its
website, Starbucks said the treatment of the officers was
"completely unacceptable."
"On behalf of Starbucks, I want to sincerely apologize to you
all for the experience that six of your officers had in our
store on July 4," Rossann Williams, the coffee chain's executive
vice president, wrote.
"What occurred in our store on July 4 is never the experience
your officers or any customer should have, and at Starbucks, we
are already taking the necessary steps to ensure this doesn’t
happen again in the future."
Last year, the company was mired in a racial profiling incident
that involved the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia
store. Starbucks later settled with the men privately, and
temporarily closed 8,000 U.S. stores for anti-bias training.
(Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa
Shumaker)
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