Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
it appears that they had been sitting in the Starbucks for at least two hours without purchasing anything
If by 2 hours, you mean 2 minutes.
http://www.phillyvoice.com/philadelphia-starbucks-rashon-nelson-donte-robinson-black-men-arrested/
Yeah. Because the two guys who were arrested are the best source for what really went down. Do you honestly think that if they were offensive, abusive, threatening, etc, that they'd say that in an interview? "I didn't do anything!" is a pretty standard response, no matter how much that person did a whole lot of things.
Having said this, that does not prove anything, in either direction. It's possible that these guy's account is 100% accurate, and the store manager is just a horrible racist who immediately asks black people to leave the store without even waiting more than 2 minutes. It's... possible.
But if that was the case, this would have literally happened a dozen or more times, every single day she worked a shift. Where are all the people popping up and talking to the media about how they got similar treatment from the same store manager at the same store? I guess my issue with this is the massive amount of coverage of what happened after the cops showed up, and tons of speculation about what lead up to this, what kind of bias caused it, and tons of claims that "if a white person had done X, Y, or Z" this wouldn't have happened, but no actual facts to back any of that up.
Quote:
Gbaji wrote:
One of them asked to use the restroom at that point and was refused because they had been sitting there for so long not buying anything.
Seriously? Who does this? You're clearly making stuff up.
As I said in my earlier post, finding hard facts on what occurred prior to the cops showing up is pretty much impossible, but I've run across several references suggesting that the two men were there for 2 hours waiting for their friend to show up. I don't know if this is just folks guessing, or estimating, or what, but that's the only reference I've gotten that suggests any sort of timeline to this. Obviously, since yesterday's interview, there's tons of reporting repeating
their claim that it was only two minutes, but that's all based on their side of the story. We have yet to hear the store manager's side (and sadly, likely never will since I'd assume she's too afraid to speak publicly at this point, which said a lot about the mob rule mentality of events like this).
Again, I'm basing this more on common sense and my own long experience both working in retail establishments, and being a customer of them. In about 8 years of working at an open to the public retail outlet, I've never once seen the cops called on a customer unless the customer was being rude, violent, or offensive to the staff and/or other customers. And it never occurs in anything remotely like 2 minutes time. The last thing the employees want is to have to call the cops on someone. I suppose it's possible that she as just having a really bad day and they happened to trigger her somehow, but to suggest that their own actions had nothing at all to do with the outcome is laughable. Even after the cops showed up, they were given the opportunity to simply walk out of the store. They refused. So yeah, there was more to it than what they are claiming.
I haven't had a chance to watch the full interview, but from the bits and quotes I've read, there's a bit of BS going on. The one guy claiming he didn't know what was going on or think it was serious until he was in cuffs? Um... That's directly contradicted by multiple other sources, stating they were repeatedly asked to leave, told what would happen if they did, and at least a few stating that they responded to the police with curses and yelling. So no, I'm having a bit of trouble accepting their side of the story as total truth.
Assuming that someone must have done something wrong if they got arrested is bad logic. But so is assuming they must have done nothing wrong. Again, we can't know for sure what happened in between them walking into the store and them being taken out in handcuffs, but given the fact that literally millions of people walk into a Starbucks store every single day (over 4 million in the US alone, if my quick math is accurate), and pretty close to zero of them get taken out in handcuffs, and presumably a decent percentage of them are black, simply being black themselves could not have been the whole reason. And, assumptions of racial bias and loud protesting aside, might not have been even part of the reason.
I've seen lots of folks who are dressed poorly. Drunks. Loud mouths. You name it. You really do have to do something beyond the norm to get the cops called on you, and then have to continue to do so after they arrive to get taken away in handcuffs. So yeah, I'm going with "there's more to this than we're hearing".