Coffee Shop That Refuses to Serve Cops Draw Protesters. And ... Calls the Cops
Last week I wrote about Haste Muerte, the coffee shop in Oakland that refused to serve police Sergeant Robert Trevino due to their “policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.” Which, while they have a legitimate right to protest what they perceive as excessive use of force by police, strikes me as kind of … how do it put this? … totally fucking illegal. And the kind of thing that would get a place padlocked by the feds for discrimination if the people being kicked off the premises were part of any ethnic or religious group. And yet the cafe is still slinging lattes like they aren’t openly treating law enforcement like they’re der Juden in 1930s Berlin.
So it should come as no surprise that Haste Muerte is drawing protesters. Not as many protesters if say, it was a bakery owned by someone with a religious objection to making a cake for a same-sex wedding. But a few people who remember that the “Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone” horseshit went on the ash heap of history with the Jim Crow laws. And the owners of the place called – who else? – the Oakland PD:
Which proves that Haste Muerte’s ignorance of the law is exceeded only by their ignorance of irony. I mean, you’d think, given their opinion of the Oakland PD, they’d call in their brute squad of baristas and medium iced French Vanilla with Splenda drinkers to come defend them. Imagine the enormous balls it takes to tell a uniformed officer to piss off and never set foot in your establishment, then call his same department for help. What kind of Bizarro world are we living in when people who openly and publicly hate cops call the cops to defend them against people who are on the cops’ side? And how does that work exactly? Did the manager of the shop come out and say “You fellas aren’t allowed inside thanks to our policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves. But you are more than welcome to stand outside and protect our physical and emotional safety from the ones who support you. And good luck finding someone who’ll serve you a coffee because you can’t get it here! Thanks but you still suck!”
But that, I guess, is part of the job. It’s what these guys sign up for when they get in a patrol car that says “To protect and to serve” on the side. They protect. And serve. Even the philistine pig-ignorant lawbreakers who refuse to serve them.