Leftist Starbucks finds itself in the sites of liberal ire

[_ajax18]

I would put money on it that she got a nice severance package with a NDA. It just makes good business sense.

But are nondisclosure agreements enforceable? Stormy Daniels?

[_Res Ipsa]

I would put money on it that she got a nice severance package with a NDA. It just makes good business sense.

But are nondisclosure agreements enforceable? Stormy Daniels?

Maybe Starbucks actually signed it...

[_Res Ipsa]

A couple of interesting articles that provide some context. The first is about how loitering and vagrancy laws were enforced against black folks. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... sing-laws/ The second provides some background about treatment of black folks by businesses and the police in the area where the Starbucks is located. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... story.html

[_Gadianton]

So. Yeah. I think a female manager was well in her rights to call 911 for an emergent situation

First, I "sort of" agree. At any time, if a person feels threatened and a situation is about to get ugly and people may be harmed, if you gotta make that call, you've got to make it. But, be advised, anytime you bring the cops in it's a dice roll, and the only consolation might be that whatever negative fallout happens, you can say to yourself that you prevented either yourself and others from being harmed. A person who is particularly bad at predicting when situations merit police intervention may not be prime material for a public-facing managerial role.

However, this has nothing to do with this incident. Here is the 911 call:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFRP7Qw ... e=youtu.be

It matches perfectly with this description:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/bus ... 25db967698

A Starbucks spokesperson, Jaime Riley, told The Washington Post on Wednesday that “in this particular store, the guidelines were that partners must ask unpaying customers to leave the store, and police were to be called if they refused.”

The very next quote:

“In this situation,” Riley said, “the police should never have been called. And we know we have to review the practices and guidelines to help ensure it never happens again.”

Only makes sense if he means the corporate guideline is flawed.

Let's review again and get pedantic about what exactly should have happened per the policy and per the law.

The 10 million dollar question in the pedantic version of the story, is if the manager actually told the men directly they needed to make a purchase or leave, or just to leave at property owners discretion, or if there was some game playing.

In her 911 call she doesn't explicitly say she asked them to leave. The men deny that she asked them to leave. The witnesses do not say they were asked to leave. The two competing interpretations would be: 1) The manager interpreted the policy as the implied refusal to leave upon refusal to order merits police intervention and did not tell them to leave directly 2) The manager really did tell them to leave directly and they refused.

If (2) the manager was within the bounds of the policy. The next question is what are the loitering laws? LE doesn't give a crap what company policy is, they are there to enforce the law. They interpreted the 911 call as implying (2), but this is crucial, because if they were played, there's no case. Of course, there's no case anyway, because without an audio recording assuming 1-party consent, it's he says-she says on whether the bare minimum has been met to constitute criminal trespass. I'm making a huge assumption that if a manager of an establishment tells you to leave, then you are legally bound to leave. (whether there are civil repercussions is another matter, but cops don't enforce civil law)

The guys refused to leave at the cops order, which took some balls, and at this point it's "what's right" vs. "what's legal" because if the manager had asked them to leave, and if loitering laws say that this constitutes criminal trespassing, and if further, they refuse to leave at the request of the cops, then the cops were technically in their right to make the arrest.

Now let's get really technical. The DA didn't file charges. Big deal. Out of how many arrests do DA file charges? Even if they were let go for lack of evidence, there is a valid arrest record unless the judge throws it or later sealed, and even then, it's not totally gone. "Was the arrest" valid vs. "were there charges" are separate matters. And statements like "Starbucks didn't press charges" are vapid; Starbucks can't press charges, DA's press charges.

So at this point, at best, the manager met the bare minimum requirements to call the cops and the cops met the bare minimum requirements for an arrest on what happens to be a hot-button civil controversy.

One question for EA and Res Ipsa:

If the cops were under the (possibly false) understanding that the manager had clearly warned them to purchase or leave, and if the law says this constitutes trespassing, and if the persons refused to obey the instructions of the officers -- what other choice was there but an arrest?

Interesting aside:

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/lo ... 83651.html

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Interesting aside:

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/lo ... 83651.html

The store is in a very busy location, so I can understand their policy. They can't have loiterers taking up space when they have customers to service.

Watching the video I was immediately struck by how controversial this issue is. One lady was indignant the LEO wasn't allowed to use the bathroom while another sided with paying customers. Very interesting, indeed.

- Doc

[_ajax18]

The store is in a very busy location, so I can understand their policy.

Is it legal for a national corporate chain store to have different policies at different locations? Is it fair to say because a manager at a different location allowed white people to use the bathroom and hang out at Starbucks without being customers then this means this manager at this location was a racist bad apple as EAllusion and Howard Schultz referred to her.

I know Res Ipsa says that Starbucks had no such policy against asking noncustomers to leave but I'm not sure that's true. I wish she would sue Starbucks to bring to light what's really going on behind the scenes of the nondisclosure agreements being made.

[_EAllusion]

So. Yeah. I think a female manager was well in her rights to call 911 for an emergent situation

First, I "sort of" agree. At any time, if a person feels threatened and a situation is about to get ugly and people may be harmed, if you gotta make that call, you've got to make it.

The issue I take here is there doesn't appear to be any basis to think that the situation was about to explode into people getting harmed. Customers politely refusing to leave a store, if you generously accept the manager's claim that she actually told them to leave, is what the non-emergency line is for. If you call 911 and say there are customers refusing to leave, the very fact that you called 911 carries the subtext that the situation is potentially explosive. Which leads to:

But, be advised, anytime you bring the cops in it's a dice roll, and the only consolation might be that whatever negative fallout happens, you can say to yourself that you prevented either yourself and others from being harmed. A person who is particularly bad at predicting when situations merit police intervention may not be prime material for a public-facing managerial role.

By bringing the police into a situation and implying to them that the people in the store are potentially threatening by calling 911, you make the situation more dangerous for everyone involved. You don't call 911 for non-emergencies because resources are to be prioritized based on emergency, but you also don't do it because it gives the wrong impression to emergency responders.

With one intellectually disabled person I work with on this very topic, I have social story cards about when it is and isn't Ok to call 911 and why. For the "no" examples there's sometimes a panel communicating "because police went here right away, they couldn't be where they were really needed in time." I'd love to do a panel that communicated, "because 911 was here, this person unnecessarily got shot," but that's too heavy for that person. It's a real risk, though.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Once again EA blithely ignores my proving that the Philadelphia PD asks citizens to call 911 and to let the operator figure it out. They even urge citizens to call 911 to report dogs taking a crap.

But, then again, EA never discusses anything in good faith.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

Is it legal for a national corporate chain store to have different policies at different locations? Is it fair to say because a manager at a different location allowed white people to use the bathroom and hang out at Starbucks without being customers then this means this manager at this location was a racist bad apple as EAllusion and Howard Schultz referred to her.

There are multiple people who claim that this same manager at the same store at the same time was allowing white people to use the bathroom and stay without making purchases. That is where the charge of racial discrimination is coming from. Instead of addressing this, you create a strawman.

If it were instead the case that this Starbucks was behaving unlike other Starbucks and had a much tighter pay or leave right now policy that was enforced in a equitable fashion but just wasn't adequately explained upon entry, then the issue would just be with questionable customer service.

[_EAllusion]

Once again EAllusion blithely ignores my proving that the Philadelphia PD asks citizens to call 911 and to let the operator figure it out.

I didn't ignore it. I wrote a direct response to it. Would you like me to be more direct? That's a dishonest summary of what they said. What they said was if you are on the fence, err on the side of caution and call 911. That doesn't mean they are Ok with people calling 911 for any reason to let the operator figure out if it is a real emergency. They're advising people who have a situation that might be an emergency to not avoid emergency attention for fear of making the wrong call. It's acknowledging that people might in good faith not understand if a situation is an emergency or what 911 is meant for and doesn't want people to underrespond.

The page you linked with that quote that was focused just on medical emergencies alone. The very same link you pulled that quote from lists examples of what constitutes an emergency and what types of things you should be thinking about if a situation is an emergency. All of those point to a situation where people are in serious, immediate risk of substantial harm.

If you disagree with this, by all means call 911 every time you have a minor medical situation and see how long it is before you're getting in hot water. I don't know what your locality is like, but it takes about 2 calls here before they'll start coming down hard on you. Fines and even jail in egregious cases are common around the country for this behavior, but it varies from place to place. The problem is there is no "person who cried wolf" response that is allowed because it is unacceptable to not respond in case there ever is a real emergency. So you need some means of deterring misuse of the system.

Your second link is to reasons people have called 911 from a local Louisiana Parish, which has nothing at all to do with Philadelphia and doesn't establish anything you are trying to argue.

You criticized me for saying that 911 is for emergencies. I linked the Philadelphia PD stating, explicitly, that 911 is for emergencies and 311 is for non-emergencies.

So with your third link, it's a bunch of Twitter comments from mostly from 2013 where the Philadephia, PA is cracking down on leaving dog poop by encouraging people to call 911 to report it rather than confronting people. All that implies is they consider it a situation requiring emergency response, presumably to catch the perpetrator before they leave or possibly to stop a rash of fights over dog poop, which is probably not the best use of their resources, but it also doesn't establish anything you are trying to argue.

By all means, feel free to link them having a 911 system that encourages people call for any reason they want and let them sort it out. You could try googling phrases like, "Worst 911 system in the country" as that's what it would be.