Starbucks has apologized and said an employee who is no longer with the company broke policy after a social media post claimed a worker served an on-duty officer a cup labeled “PIG” instead of the officer’s name.
Johnny O’Mara, the police chief in Kiefer, Oklahoma, shared an image of a cup in a Facebook post Thursday, explaining the officer had bought coffee for the town’s 911 dispatchers “as a thank you for all they do.” That image was no longer publicly available Saturday.
“This is what he gets for being nice,” O’Mara wrote in the post.
“It’s another tiny pinprick into the heart of men and women who are asking themselves more often: ‘Why am I doing this?’” he continued.
He added the coffee shop offered to replace the coffee with a proper label, an offer he declined.
The worker who wrote the message violated policy and is no longer employed with the company, according to a Friday statement from Starbucks apologizing for the incident. “This language is offensive to all law enforcement and is not representative of the deep appreciation we have for police officers who work tirelessly to keep our communities safe,” the statement says, in part.
The company also announced plans to host a “Coffee with a Cop” event at Starbucks in a joint statement with the Kiefer Police Department.
Last year, Starbucks closed stores and had employees undergo anti-bias training after the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia location. The coffee chain’s executives met with Arizona officers earlier this year after six officers were asked to leave a store because a customer felt unsafe.
Read more at usatoday.com.
