“As for the Starbucks employees, while it will ultimately be up to the company to decide whether their employees acted within the spirit of their organizational policies, they certainly broke no laws either”. He said that the company was reviewing its guidelines, which can differ among its 28,000 stores worldwide, and that it would invest in training about unconscious bias.
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Protests continued today at the Starbucks where the men were arrested, with crowds initially gathered outside only to be driven inside from heavy rains.
Johnson, the CEO, said Starbucks accepts full responsibility for what occurred.
“The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything”.
A Starbucks spokeswoman says the pair have agreed to meet with Mr Johnson.
The two men were released after Starbucks decided not to press charges. “These men were terribly disrespected by Starbucks employees”.
“Why would they be asked to leave?” said Andrew Yaffe, who runs a real estate development firm and wanted to discuss business investment opportunities with the two men.
A Starbucks spokesperson told CNN that the meeting could take place this week while Johnson is in the area addressing the controversy over the arrests.
The viral video of two black men being arrested inside a Philadelphia Starbucks has affected a cafe hundreds of miles away in Durham. “The whole thing, we just wish it didn’t happen”.
Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment about the employment status of the manager who called police.
“I want to know why these doors are locked”, one protester reportedly shouted. And that is what we’re focused on.
Johnson said he hopes to meet the two men in the next couple of days.
As of now, though, the only change is that the manager no longer works at that Starbucks, which the company says was a “mutual” decision.
Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson spoke out on ABC News. In 2015 in the face of protests nationwide about police shootings of black men, Starbucks launched what it called the “race together” effort, having employees write that term on coffee cups to try to engage customers to think and talk about racial issues.
Officials have said police officers were told the men had asked to use the store’s restroom but were denied because they hadn’t bought anything, and they refused to leave.
Starbucks’s reputation for being a place where people can hang out – whether for a few minutes between appointments or for hours while they finish up a project – is at the center of public outrage after two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks store on Thursday.
By claiming that the manager didn’t “intend” for the men to be arrested, it sounds as though Johnson wants to shift blame to the police.
“Starbucks may be able to decide who sits in its store, but only the police could decide to arrest these men”, Shuford said.
“What happened and the way that incident escalated and the outcome was nothing but reprehensible and I’m sorry”, Johnson said.
“Starbucks failed these men and all of its customers by treating them in this unfair and demeaning way”, Shuford said. Calls to boycott Starbucks poured in online, while protesters flooded the Philadelphia Starbucks store over the weekend.
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Activists then made their way to the Starbucks at 15th and Latimer streets, according to WCAU, where they shouted, “no justice, no peace”, before marching to the Starbucks at The Bellevue Hotel on Broad Street. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said the two were released “because of lack of evidence” that a crime had been committed.
