SBUX Starbucks Corporation

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)

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