McDonald’s Worker Charged for Allegedly Tampering with Police Officer’s Food

A McDonald’s employee was arrested Friday in Bakersfield, California, after she allegedly tampered with a policeman’s food order.

Twenty-one-year-old Tatyana Hargrove was taken into custody and booked into the Central Receiving Facility on charges of one felony count for tampering with the meal.

Monday, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office posted a press release to its Facebook page that read:

On Friday, November 15, 2019, deputies were dispatched to the McDonald’s restaurant in the 13000-block of Rosedale Highway to conduct a food tampering investigation. Restaurant management reported that while reviewing surveillance video, they learned an employee intentionally tampered with food that was served to a Bakersfield Police Department Officer on November 12. McDonald’s management provided deputies with the surveillance video.

The release did not give details as to what Hargrove did to the policeman’s food, but KGET reported that Hargrove was seen “rubbing a hamburger bun on the floor and spitting on it before serving it to the officer.”

In 2017, Hargrove sued the city of Bakersfield for alleged excessive force and civil rights violations after officers “mistook her for a male suspect and she was bitten by a police dog,” according to Bakersfield.com.

The report continued:

Hargrove said at the time she had been thrown to the ground and punched in the face by the officers. The officers’ accounts differed from Hargrove, providing a less confrontational version of the encounter. The BPD eventually called the encounter a case of mistaken identity while the Bakersfield chapter of the NAACP said it was racially motivated. Bakersfield Police Chief Lyle Martin apologized to Hargrove’s family after the incident, saying the department would strive to do better.