What Would You Do?
On April 18, following the Starbucks incident in Philadelphia, some of us in the city manager's office talked about it, and wondered if there could have been a better way to handle it. We agreed that Starbucks has a reasonable expectation that people using their restaurant be paying customers. But having police officers drag out the "trespassers" was a poor way to handle it. Megan Phelan suggested an elegant, win-win solution to the situation.
Simultaneously, and unknown to us, the management team of the police department was having exactly the same conversation, and arrived at the same solution, based on the philosophy of "we'll be the most reasonable people on the scene."
What was the solution that both groups came up with, independently? If you have a guess, either add a comment to this blog, or send a reply to my transmittal e-mail. I'll share the answer(s) next month...
--SL
Nathan Early started work in April as a trainee in LOCOM. He's done dispatching for private companies such as Frontier Communications. Nathan was born in Eugene and graduated from Sheldon High. He lives in Wilsonville and has a dog. When he's not working, he enjoys X Box video games, camping, gold mining, snowboarding and water skiing.
Robert Harris is our new electrical inspector; he has spent the previous 26 years as an electrical contractor in Hawaii. Robert was born in Yuba City and graduated from high school in Biggs, CA. He and his wife Michele live in Milwaukie, and have two adult daughters. They recently got a Dalmatian rescue dog. In his spare time Robert enjoys reading and cooking.
In January, Jane Jarman officially joined the staff at the ACC as client services coordinator, working in the memory care respite program. Jane was born in San Jose and lived in Lake Tahoe, then moved to Oregon and graduated from Lake Oswego High and University of Oregon. She realized she enjoys working with the elderly after serving as a caretaker for her mother. Jane lives in Rivergrove and has two cats and a dog. In her free time she enjoys hiking and skiing.
Austin Martinez started working for park maintenance in March; he had been working since June on a temporary assignment with the water crew. Austin was born in Sacramento and moved to Oregon when he was 12, graduating from Gladstone High. He lives in Gladstone and enjoys track racing and building cars; he is currently building a Toyota Cressida. He and his girlfriend have "lots of pets," including dogs and cats, and spiders and snakes. See below for a video of one of his pets (a tarantula).
Jeffrey Williamson also works in park maintenance, currently assigned to Foothills Park. He was born in Beaverton and graduated from Jesuit High and Oregon State University (with a double major in horticulture and ag business management). For the past 16 years he has worked for the Oregon Garden in Silverton. He and his wife live in Beaverton and have four children and two cats. In his free time he enjoys church and family activities.
Austin's pet video
My guess is that the solution Megan and the police management team came up with is "We'll buy them coffees."
ReplyDeleteMy understanding of the Philadelphia incident, though, is that the gentlemen involved have stated that they planned to order items, but were waiting for their friend to arrive first. They didn't really need anyone to buy them coffees. They felt that they were being racially profiled, and targeted unfairly by being asked to leave.
FACTS:
ReplyDeletePhiladelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said that Starbucks employees called 911 to report a trespassing complaint.
The employees told officers the two men wanted to use the restroom but were told the facilities are only for paying customers. The Starbucks employees then asked the men to leave, but they refused, Ross said.
Officers responded and asked the men three times “politely to leave the location because they were being asked to leave by employees because they were trespassing.” When the men again refused to leave, they were arrested “without incident,” Ross said.
“They did a service that they were called to do,” Ross said of the officers. “And if you think about it logically, that if a business calls and they say that someone is here that I no longer wish to be in my business, (officers) now have a legal obligation to carry out their duties. And they did just that.”
Ross, who is black, referenced his own experiences while making his case, saying, “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.”
Starbucks later apologized to the two individuals also adding that they would take steps “to ensure these types of situations never happen in any of our stores.”
Chip’s Comments:
I’m a middle of the road guy. It bothers me a lot when some people decide that Starbucks, the Police or the Customers were totally right or wrong. There’s plenty that all sides could have done better.
This is clearly a tough neighborhood. Businesses don’t normally put “codes” to lock their restrooms unless there have been problems.
Clearly there is implicit bias in this incident. If I had asked for the bathroom code dressed in my normal city work clothes, I would have been given the code regardless of purchase. If you’re black, sporting a beard, in sweatpants and a T-Shirt, you’re going to get challenged.
Having said that, if I was asked to leave, I would not have hesitated to leave. These customers were not only asked to leave by management, they decided to (fight, make a scene, draw a line in the sand…call it what you’d like) and they even defied the Police when THEY asked them 3 times, politely in their words, to leave. For most of us, they wouldn’t have had to ask twice.
Understanding that I have this hindsight of this incident as an advantage, I might have chatted with the men (understanding that these guys probably wanted a TV worthy video by this time) found out what kind of coffee they wanted, bought them coffee and would have attempted to socialize with them. Now that they were customers, I’d let them do their bathroom thing, and tried to defuse this with the management and them.
"...if I was asked to leave, I would not have hesitated to leave."
ReplyDeleteWould you really have been so sanguine about it, Chip, if you truly felt that you were being singled out and targeted because of your race, at a store which you had been visiting as a customer for years?
I submit that you--and I--don't really know what we would do, or how we would feel, in such a situation, since we would never be targeted by the implicit bias which you admit occurs.
Here's an interesting article from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/us/starbucks-arrest-philadelphia.html
And another: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-men-arrested-philadelphia-starbucks-say-they-feared-their-lives-n867396
Todd,
ReplyDeleteI'll never know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my race in any business. I recognize that. But my upbringing is such that if I know that you need a code to get into a bathroom, and I'm not a regular customer that would probably already know the code, I would have ordered a small coffee just to be a customer assuming that customers get to have the code.
Can you get a code without buying if you're white. Very High Probability if you don't look homeless, and certainly better odds than if you're black or brown wearing sweats.
Is this right? Nope. Would I really have been so sanguine about it if asked to leave? Not really. If asked to leave for any reason, I would have left. Depending on my perception of the reason, I might have sent a follow-up letter to the appropriate entity in the corporation though. I'm a true believer that the "pen is mightier than the sword" even in the era of Youtube and smartphones.
I guess I didn't say what *I* would do... or what I hope would be done, since I don't own or manage a business.
ReplyDeleteI hope that store managers and staff would be aware of corporate policies, if any, as well as individual store policies and the points on which they match or differ.
I hope that staff would try to be self-aware enough to recognize their own possible implicit (or explicit) bias, and how it might be affecting their reaction to a situation.
I hope that staff will ask themselves whether it's truly necessary to get the police involved, for while "no call too small" is fine, I think that occasionally "NO call is the right call." If a situation can be de-escalated, if the other person's point of view can be taken into account, there might be a satisfactory outcome without police involvement. Not always, I know, but sometimes.
If the police *are* called, I hope that they'll be aware that the contacted party will want to express their own version of the situation, even if that may not change the outcome of the situation. I also hope that the police will be aware of the possibility of implicit bias on the part of the person who called them, as well as on their own part. (I'm assuming that there has been effective training about this for Lake Oswego officers.)