Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Men hope to sow change after arrests
Two arrested at Starbucks want to push for lasting action on racial bias.
PHILADELPHIA — Rashon Nelson initially brushed it off when the Starbucks manager told him he couldn’t use the restroom because he wasn’t a paying customer.
He thought nothing of it when he and his childhood friend and business partner, Donte Robinson, were approached at their table and were asked if they needed help. The 23-yearold entrepreneurs declined, explaining they were just waiting for a business meeting.
A few minutes later, they hardly noticed when the police came into the coffee shop — until officers started walking in their direction.
“That’s when we knew she called the police on us,” Nelson told The Associated Press in the first interview by the two black men since video of their arrests April 12, ostensibly for tresspassing, touched off a furor around the U.S. over racial profiling.
Nelson and Robinson were led away in handcuffs from the shop in the city’s well-to-do Rittenhouse Square neighborhood in an incident recorded on a customer’s cellphone.
In the week since, the men have met with Starbucks’ CEO, who has apologized, and they have started pushing for lasting change at the coffee-shop chain, including new policies on discrimination and ejecting customers.
“We do want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody again,” Robinson said. “What if it wasn’t us sitting there? What if it was the kid that didn’t know somebody that knew somebody? Do they make it to jail? Do they die? What happens?”
On Thursday, they also got an apology from Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, a black man who at first staunchly defended his officers’ handling of the incident.
At a news conference, Ross said he “failed miserably” in addressing the arrests. He said that the issue of race is not lost on him and that he shouldn’t be making things worse. “Shame on me if, in any way, I’ve done that,” he said.
He also said the police department did not have a policy for dealing with such situations but does now, and it will be released soon.
Nelson and Robinson said they went to the Starbucks to meet Andrew Yaffe, a white local businessman, over a potential real estate opportunity. Three officers showed up not long after. Nelson said they weren’t questioned but were told to leave immediately.
Yaffe showed up as the men were being handcuffed. Nelson and Robinson calmly cooperated.
“When you know that you did nothing wrong, how do you really react to it?” Nelson said. “You can either be ignorant or you can show some type of sophistication and act like you have class. That was the choice we had.”
Nelson and Robinson spent hours in a jail cell and were released after midnight, when the district attorney declined to prosecute them.
Nelson said he wondered if he’d make it home alive.
“Any time I’m encountered by cops, I can honestly say it’s a thought that runs through my mind,” Nelson said. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
The men’s attorney, Stewart Cohen, said they were illegally profiled.
Kevin Johnson, CEO of the Seattle-based company, met with the men, called the arrests “reprehensible” and ordered more than 8,000 Starbucks stores closed on the afternoon of May 29 so that employees can receive training on unconscious bias.
The men said they are looking for more lasting results and are in mediation with Starbucks to make changes, including new policies on customer ejections and racial discrimination.
“You go from being someone who’s just trying to be an entrepreneur, having your own dreams and aspirations, and then this happens,” Nelson said. “How do you handle it? Do you stand up? Do you fight? Do you sit down and just watch everyone else fight for you? Do you let it slide, like we let everything else slide with injustice?”