Police have opened an investigation into an Atlanta-area Starbucks store upon discovering a hidden camera inside the cafe’s restroom last week.
A 25-year-old woman reportedly found the camera Tuesday in a restroom, taped under a baby-changing table. She removed it and alerted a store manager, Fox News reported.
The manager reported the incident to Starbucks’ corporate office, according to a police report.
“We were quite concerned to learn this and are grateful to our customers and partners who took action to involve local authorities,” a Starbucks spokesperson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The manager then turned over the device to the police for inspection. Authorities reportedly found 25 videos, some reportedly of people using the restroom, upon investigating the device.
“We’ve learned that the device had about an hour’s worth of recorded video on it and detectives found 8 to 10 men and women videotaped while in that restroom,” one officer told Fox 5 Atlanta. The officer added authorities could not identify any “private parts” because of the poor video quality.
Authorities have not yet identified any suspects but say that whoever is found to be responsible could face a charge of felony eavesdropping.
The discovery comes after Starbucks faced a nationwide backlash last week over an incident in which employees at a Philadelphia store called the police on two black men when they asked to use the restroom and did not buy anything.
Authorities arrested the men on trespassing charges, but no charges were filed against the men.
Starbucks responded to the incident by sending its CEO to Philadelphia to deliver a personal apology to the men and announced it would close 8,000 of its stores for “racial bias training” for an afternoon next month.
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