On July 4, 2019 in Tempe, Arizona (Tempe borders Phoenix, which is to the west), a Starbucks' employee requested that the six police employees in the small restaurant move from the bar area where customers picked up drinks, or else leave. Because the six did not come in together, customers were provided with the special treat of a prolonged police presence throughout the store before the cops huddled near the bar. Even as the police huddled, they did so with eyes strategically perched so as to maintain visuals on the customers. One cop in particular repeated glanced over his shoulder with a darting eye towards the customers as if they were threats. That customers might be uncomfortable even with the sheer number of police in the small store was obviously lost on the police there as well as Starbucks’ employees. Yet the company was strangely without any policy on the maximum number of police who could be in a store at one time and for how long (i.e., when no incident is occurring). This is strange given the high incident of police brutality, especially in Phoenix. Just a week later, a protest took place against the brutality in Tempe. It is natural, especially in such a context, that at least some non-criminal customer would feel uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the police felt
entitled to disrespect the customers by showing such a huge presence in the
small store. Ironically, the police felt instead that it was disrespectful for
a Starbucks’ employee to ask them to step away from the bar or leave after a customer
complained about feeling uncomfortable with such a significant non-incident police presence. This is thus a story
about institutions not taking responsibility for their own respective roles in a problem.
The police circulated in the store for some time as they did not come in together, and then huddled near where customers pick up drinks. One of the police (front left) turned his head every few minutes to glare at the customers. Who would not feel uncomfortable?
For
its part, Starbucks sought to mischaracterize the customer as “anxious, nervous
or uncomfortable” when the customer actually said he or she was uncomfortable. Starbucks’ spokesman Reggie Borges also claimed that the customer “continued to ask about the officers” as if obsessed.[1] Actually, the customer approached the Starbucks employee twice, and without the “anxiety” or obsession that Borges claims the employee wanted to relieve. That the customer spoke with the employee twice suggests that the employee had not been very motivated to act on behalf of customer experience. Also reflecting a disregard for customer experience, Starbucks’ allowance of any number of police in a store at a time was part of the underlying problem, not some heavily caffeinated, hyper-strung or "problematic" customer. Deliberately mischaracterizing the customer was just Starbucks' way of denying its own deficiency in not having a policy on a maximum police presence. According the the manager of another Starbucks' store, the company should have had such a policy rather than intimating that the customer was uniquely distraught. I submit that that virtually anybody
would feel uncomfortable with so many police walking around in such a small
space. The customer reportedly later asked the shift manager why Starbucks did not have a policy on a maximum number of police on break in a store at one time, to which the manager reportedly retorted, “I’m going to end this conversation.”
As
for the police in the store, a certain arrogance can be said to be in people
who do not act out of respect for others—such as by showing such a huge police
presence in the midst of customers trying to enjoy their drinks—while perceiving a request to move or leave given the disrespect as being inherently
disrespectful. Clearly, the police taking their break in the store had no concern
for the customers’ comfort, given the perception that the request to move or
leave was itself out of line. Perhaps the public servants in Arizona held the
view that the public should take whatever the police want to do, so even a
request for the police to back off would be viewed as an affront. Just
as it cannot be assumed that the customer was a shaking, hyper-caffeinated
anxiety case, nor can it be assumed that the customer had a criminal
background, as some people on social media suggested, for even innocent customers would understandably feel uncomfortable with six
police walking around with guns visible in a small room.
I
contend that the local police had no recognition of having too much of a
presence in the store because intimidation as a deterrent by a very visible,
ubiquitous presence in the public was at the time the standard tactic,
especially in the city of Phoenix. The light rail company had the same view,
for it was not unusual to see four or even five security guards (with
police-like badges) on just a half of a car staring at passengers.
On a
Saturday on a train, I was standing with my bike, which is lawful, so imagine
my surprise when I looked up and saw three
security employees wearing sunglasses standing confrontationally near me
and staring at me! I put on my sunglasses and stared back. Welcome to Phoenix.
Three security guards clustered in the back half of a car. Were so many guards and such clustering really necessary?
Once a passenger sitting near me asked a guard
about the huge presence without an incident, to which the guard retorted, “There
can be as many of us as we want; get it?!?” His aggressive tone alone raised a
red flag for me in terms of the wisdom of allowing so many security employees
in a small space—not to mention giving them any authority in the first place.
A stationary Phoenix policeman on a weekday keeping a close eye on a platform as a matter of routine rather than an incident. How might waiting passengers have felt? Should this have been factored in?
The
light rail company also played a role in the excessiveness shown by the local
police. Twice I saw three or four passengers on a light-rail platform
surrounded by about 15 police and rail-security guards for not having had a
ticket. Motorists who get a ticket for speeding were not treated to such a
police presence, so I suspect the reason for the over-reaction on the train has
to do with the ridership.
As another example, at a light-rail
platform about a half mile from the gay-pride festival during a Saturday
afternoon in a local park in April, 2019, four
police cars with lights continuously flashing
were parked all afternoon in the
street along the light-rail platform. As I passed on a train, I saw an empty
platform. When I passed by again in the early evening, I saw the four jeeps
whose lights were still flashing, but this time I saw four police employees
with a dog going back and forth on the platform in spite of the fact that only
twenty or so people were waiting for trains.
About a half-mile from a gay-pride fest in a city park, four policemen with a drug-sniffing dog patrol a nearly empty rail platform.
Yet when the train picked up
baseball fans in downtown Phoenix, no such show of deterrence was shown. If you
can visualize four police jeeps with lights flashing next to an empty rail
platform, you have grasped the distinctive over-kill mentality of Arizona. My
point is that given that mentality, both the police and Starbucks employees
should have realized that virtually any customer
would naturally feel uncomfortable with so many police in the store. That that
case took place just over a month after a notorious case of police abuse of
power makes it all the more perplexing to me why the customer would be treated
as a special case.
Writing about an atrocious police
incident that occurred on May 27, 2019 in Phoenix, Arizona, Cedric Alexander, a
former police employee, police chief, director of public safety, and deputy
mayor in Rochester, New York writes that a Phoenix police employee approached a
newly parked car and said, “I’m going to f---ing put a cap in your f---ing
head!” Why such anger? Why such rage?
The four-year-old in the car had stolen a doll from a discount store.[2]
Was the enraged employee of the police department so intent to put a bullet in
the girl’s head because of the nature of the crime, or else the presumed sordid
little criminal? An image of a Nazi SS officer shooting a small Jewish girl may
come to mind. Or did the Arizona variant determine that the mother should pay
with her life because her young daughter walked out of a store with a doll and
the mother had not noticed? Did the fact that a discount store had made the complaint trigger the police employee’s
anger at the poor? Admittedly, it is the
poor in Phoenix who regularly ignore traffic lights and even cross-walks in
crossing even very busy roads. The lack of respect for law is endemic and thus
astounding there—to say nothing of the lack of consideration for other people.
“The public” is a term rightly with a
sordid reputation in the Phoenix valley in Arizona. So I can understand why the
local police could become demoralized, even disgusted and angry, but this is
not an excuse, especially as police are given the governmental power of lethal
force. Human nature itself may not be up to the task, given such immense power
on an interpersonal level. The Stanford Experiment in the late 1960’s, for
example, demonstrated how quickly people (i.e., students) given authority over
others could resort to violence even though it is expressly prohibited in the
authority given. Did we not learn anything regarding human nature and police
power from that experiment?
The judgment that shooting someone in
the head could be appropriate rather than outrageous in the case of shoplifting
by a young child (assuming the child had known what she had done!) is so warped
that this itself can be taken as a red flag concerning the human mind, at least
on the Phoenix police force, and having the authority to use lethal force.
Cedric Alexander writes that the police employee’s conduct was “unthinkable.”[3]
Perhaps the human brain or mind is altered in some fundamental sense—and not in
a good way—when a dose of pure power is taken in.
The girl’s mother, along with a
1-year-old, was in the back of the car. When the police employee ordered the
mother to put her hands up, she was holding the younger child and so she
replied that she could not raise her hands in the air. The employee then
ordered the mother’s fiancée, who was in the driver’s seat, out of the car. In
spite of the fact that the man complied, the police employee pushed the guy
against the car and kicked his legs
apart. “When I tell you to do something, you f---king do it!” That the employee
had been wrong about the driver (for he had done as commanded) brings up the
troubling matter of the toxicity of power when it is mixed with cognitive issues
or simply stupidity. At the time, Arizona had one of the worst systems of
public (K-12) education, and faulty assumptions and incorrect conclusions were
quite common even in entry-level office positions (even as managers were
relying on them to deal with “the public”).
Of course, the police employee may
have meant the mother, who was not able to put up her hands, but then his
verdict that she was nonetheless culpable would of course be warped. The
employee’s decision to take the anger
out on the complying driver demonstrates bad judgment (perhaps from excessive
anger), aggression, and cognitive lapses. Even when the mother shouted that her
door would not open, the “understanding” employee shouted, “You’re going to
f---king get shot!”[4]
The assumption that putting the fear of death in the woman would somehow fix
the door is interesting from the standpoints of the employee’s cognitive
ability and state of mind.
Even if the employee assumed from a generally negative bias or actual experience with the poor in
Phoenix (who seemed too quick to lie and even become aggressive) that the
mother must be lying, the
disproportionate judgment that shooting the woman would fit the lie (i.e., that
the lie justified death) suggests that the employee’s mind could not handle
having the power of lethal force. This would presumably be a basic matter in a
police department’s hiring process as well as for police supervisors.
If the police employee was enraged because his order was not being
instantly followed, both his notion of human nature in others (i.e., fallible
rather than robotic) and his own psychology could be flagged. To be able to get
other people to do against their will what you want is a basic definition of
human power. Accordingly, the employee’s power-urge was too much for him to
handle the power to kill other people. Once the mother was out of the car, the
employee tried “to grab the one-year-old child” out of the mother’s arms.[5]
The employee clearly had an urge for instant
power, and he evinced no basic compassion. Perhaps, as in a Nazi SS officer
plying Jewish kids off their parents before boarding them all on separate train
cars or even trains, the human mind high on pure power chocks off any sentiment
of compassion.
So far we have anger, impaired
judgment, cognitive issues, aggression, and a will to power. This is a toxic
cocktail to be sure, and it has no place in a human brain on a police force.
Extreme care in hiring is thus important, and we can deduce that the Phoenix
police department had been lax in this regard too. Adding tinder to the fire
was the cultural ideological “authoritarian” assumption generally in the
Phoenix valley that intimidation is an effective deterrent. A major flaw in the
ideological stance is that people with good motives also get intimidated, as
when the police presence is ubiquitous. This can include police helicopters as
well as police cars—the former flying low even on normal routine patrols and
the latter circling or standing still (i.e., patrols that cease to be mobile).
The key is the frequency or amount being excessive to not only human
sensitivities to being nearly constantly watched or intimidated, but also
having merit in actually stopping a crime. It is no surprise, therefore, that
more police were sent to the scene of the doll-heist. I would bet the number of
police cars was excessive given the actual threat. To be sure, the police
employee probably exaggerated it in his own mind and thus to others. Maybe the
police in the Tempe Starbucks store regarded the employee’s request as a
threat, given that rarely had they probably gotten push back. Similarly,
bullies tend to regard anyone standing up for the bullied as a threat, and even
as disrespectful!
Cedric Alexander points out in his
piece that government gives police employees their legal authority to use
lethal force, but police “also need legitimacy,” which according to the 2014
report by the Police Executive Research Forum “lies within the perceptions of
the public.”[6]
The perception of employees abusing their privilege
to use lethal force does nothing to help legitimacy.
So I am not surprised at all in
reading Cedric Alexander’s report that the police chief, Jeri Williams, said in
a public forum on May 27, 2019 that real change “doesn’t start with our police
department. Real change starts with our community.”[7]
With the excessive show of police generally (in order to intimidate so as to
deter), it was difficult to view that city as a community at all. Alexander
writes of the Phoenix police department that “as professionals under oath, they
have the responsibility to start the ‘real change.’”[8]
Such responsibility was all the more justified because police employees were
part of the problem. The police chief said in the forum that the employee’s
conduct (and attitude?) on the doll shop-lifting case “unacceptable.” Cedric
Alexander writes critically of this antiseptic and bureaucratic word.
“Terrifying, traumatizing” are more fitting, he writes; the lift-threatening
behavior of those Phoenix [public servants!] cannot be written off as
‘unacceptable.’”[9]
Yet this is exactly what a department not being held accountable and certainly
not holding itself accountable does. Its deterrence method of saturating the
city with non-incident police presence is therefore unfortunate. More than
this, it can be reckoned as a passive-aggressive instance of callousness and
impaired judgment.
The incident with the little girl is a
case in which police believed they had considerable discretion on how they
could treat (and regard!) the public. Less extreme, the police in the Tempe
Starbucks store assumed that they could bring in as many police as they wanted
even if the customers could rationally be
expected to be uncomfortable. Criticizing Starbucks’ reaction as disrespectful
is akin to the Phoenix chief’s refusal to take responsibility; it’s the other
guy’s fault. The police association even brought up the irrelevant point that
some of the police in the store were veterans, and so the military was
disrespected![10] Starbucks’
request was not disrespectful toward the police, given the thoughtlessness of
the police in disregarding the fact that so many police would naturally cause
discomfort. Such a showing goes beyond feeling safe, especially given the
police employee who felt the need to keep an eye on the customers. If he did
not feel safe in the store, he should have left rather than make at least one
customer feel uncomfortable. The
association representing the police was so busy feeling disrespected that no
thought at all went into why customers could rightly feel uncomfortable with so
many police in a small store.
So in apologizing to the Tempe police department for having
had the good sense to follow up on a customer feeling uncomfortable, Starbucks ignored
or dismissed an entire side of the story—one in which people in the Phoenix
valley understandably felt uncomfortable when the local police go too far. “When
those officers entered the store and a customer raised a concern over their
presence, they should have been welcomed and treated with dignity and the
utmost respect by our partners (employees). Instead, they were made to feel
unwelcome and disrespected, which is completely unacceptable,” according to
Rossann Williams, a vice president of Starbucks.[11] So much for customer experience! By Williams' strong-handed response, the customer’s
legitimate concern about the excessive police presence should have been ignored
and that presence in fact greeted! I submit that the Starbucks employee had rightly
judged the customer’s concern to be valid, as the police presence was rather
severe for a break, and that Williams would have been fine with customers awash
in police presence. In effect, Starbucks backtracked in apologizing such that
the police could feel free to disrespect customers by having too much of a
presence in a given store. Starbucks would no longer stick up for its customers
who feel uncomfortable with the over-kill of police who do not respect
customers enough to limit the police presence. Instead, Starbucks would
continue to greet as many police employees as want to inundate a given store.
In effect, Starbucks would enable the “intimidation as deterrent” authoritarian
tactic that is so ingrained in the Phoenix-area culture. It is, “a police
state,” as several new arrivals have observed. In such a state, customers
wanting a break from it while enjoying a drink at Starbucks could hardly be
blamed, but sadly this did not stop Starbucks from tacitly doing so. Meanwhile,
like the Phoenix police chief who had viewed the public as needing to take the
initiative even after the police abuse of the four-year-old shoplifter, the
Tempe police chief could only see his employees being disrespected. This tells
me that neither department was used to being held accountable. The prerogative
to being able to get away with disrespectful conduct easily views any push-back
as disrespectful. It’s always the other guy. Starbucks, meanwhile, should have
stood up for its customers because six cops in a small store are simple too
many for customers to feel comfortable. The uniform and the lethal right to use
force render police qualitatively different than customers, hence Starbucks’
refusal even after the fact to come up with a policy protecting the experience
of customers is also telling.
Recommended: Bucking Starbucks' Star, available at Amazon.
1, Sandra Garcia, “Starbucks Apologizes After 6 Police Officers Say They Were
Asked to Leave,” The New York Times, July
8, 2019.
2. Cedric L Alexander, “The Police Overreaction to Case of 4-year-old and Barbie
Doll Isn’t Just ‘Unacceptable’—It’s Outrageous,” CNN.com (accessed June 20,
2019).
10. Amir Vera, “Starbucks Apologizes after Six Officers Say They Were Asked to
Leave a Store in Arizona,” cnn.com July 6, 2019.
11. Amir Vera, “Starbucks Apologizes after Six Officers Say They Were Asked to
Leave a Store in Arizona,” cnn.com July 6, 2019.
