Oakland coffee shop Hasta Muerte Coffee refuses to serve police due to a concern for the “safety of customers.”
The policy came to light after NBC Bay Area reported the coffee shop refused to serve an officer in uniform on February 16.
KCRA reports that the store took to social media, saying, “We have a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.”
An Instagram post by Hasta Muerte provides an overview of the store’s position, saying in part:
We know in our experience working on campaigns against police brutality that we are not alone saying that police presence compromises our feeling of physical & emotional safety. There are those that do not share that sentiment – be it because they have a friend or relative who is a police, because they are white or have adopted the privileges whiteness affords, because they are home- or business- owning, or whatever the particular case may be. If they want to make claims about police being part of the community, or claims that race trumps the badge & gun when it comes to police, they must accept that the burden of proof for such a claim is on them.
Hasta Muerte also noted, “The facts are that [people of color], women, and queer police are complicit in upholding the same law and order that routinely criminalizes and terrorizes black and brown and poor folks, especially youth, trans, and houseless folks.”
This statement dovetails with KCRA’s report that Hasta Muetre shared a post in Spanish, which said, “Talk to your neighbors, not the police.”
The refusal to serve police comes as the Trump administration is suing California for the state’s sanctuary city policy.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.