In a widely circulated video of the incident, at least two people who were present verbally defended the two men and questioned why they were being arrested and handcuffed.
“This is ridiculous,” said one white man to a police officer in the video. “What did they get called for? Because there were two black guys sitting here meeting me? What did they do?”
“They didn’t do anything, I saw the entire thing,” a woman can be heard saying. At least five police officers were present during the arrest, the video shows.
Police have not named the men, and the pair’s attorney, Lauren A. Wimmer, also declined to name them “at this time.”
The two men had gone to the Starbucks to meet Andrew Yaffe, the white man who can be seen in the video questioning the police officers, according to Wimmer.
Yaffe could not immediately be reached for comment, but Wimmer told BuzzFeed News he is a friend of the two men. He runs a real estate development, investment, and management firm, and the men were meeting with him “to discuss potential residential and commercial real estate opportunities in Philadelphia,” she said.
The two men had not ordered immediately upon arriving, as they were still waiting for Yaffe. While they waited for him, “a white female manager who was on duty at the time” asked them to leave, said Wimmer.
When they said they were just waiting for another person to arrive before ordering, she phoned the police, Wimmer said.
“How many times have we sat in Starbucks minding our own business, waiting for a friend to come, and then we order?” Wimmer said.
When Yaffe arrived and found the two men being arrested, he called Wimmer, whom he is also friends with, she said.
The two men were arrested around 5:30 p.m., and were fingerprinted and photographed by police.
Police told Wimmer they had arrested the men for “defiant trespassing.”
Black ppl can’t even go to Starbucks without getting arrested. Seriously I’m so tired of this fucjed up system
But seriously though, who calls the police on someone for not ordering?
And what the fuck is defiant trespassing?
Hi! As someone who worked at Starbucks for two years I can confidently say that there is no such thing as “defiant trespassing” during regular business hours. We let homeless people sit in the lobby for hours on end on numerous occasions. I can assure you that “defiant trespassing” in this case is code for “being black”.
I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say
reblog if attacking fascism is really the hill you want to die on
I believe it is also the hill that many people /actually/ died on
ugh, I’m so pissed. I got to floor lv. 99 in a dungeon – the last level of that particular dungeon after fighting off the hunger stat by bits and pieces – and I got ambushed and axed. Dammit
All because a stupid Mr. Mime that I did not need decided to use up our fucking reviver seed
they LOVE bringing black people into their BS. It’s like that cop who committed SUICIDE and tried to frame it as homicide by a black man.
.
I just fucking wrote about this when that white supremacist stabbed himself and blamed it on antifa. Times this has happened before:
-Just last year, Sherry Hall, a cop, shot herself in the abdomen and had her department literally call out the dogs for a manhunt of a nonexistent black perpetrator:
-When Barack Obama was elected president, a McCain campaign volunteer carved a “B” on her face and blamed it on a black man. The “B” was carved backwards because she was looking in the mirror to do it:
-Do you remember the woman in the 90’s who drowned her kids by leaving them in a car that she then rolled into a lake? She originally claimed that she was carjacked by a black man and the entire nation was spreading her lies for nine days before anyone added up the inconsistencies in her story:
-The woman who claimed that 14-year-old Emmett Till whistled at her and sparked his brutal murder finally admitted, in 2007 in an interview for a book only released this year, that he had never made “physical or verbal advances toward her.”:
If you’re in NYS, DO NOT SIGN UP WITH FIDELIS CARE.
If you support real religious freedom (i.e. your religious choices are between you and your god, you have a right to privacy)
if you have endometreosis or any other complex reproductive-system-related condition
if you want to keep seeing your gyno, and want to be able to access all the services your gyno provides
DO NOT SIGN UP WITH FIDELIS.
They don’t have the guts to say this anywhere you’d notice it while you’re perusing the plan benefits– I actually did try quite hard to go through all the fine print but I missed it. And clearly, New York State expects you to miss it. Because when I signed up, after a couple of months, they sent me this letter, which clearly indicates that they didn’t expect me to already have realized this:
“Fidelis, the health plan you joined, does not pay for family planning services.” (That last is bold and underlined.)
The back side of the letter tells me to go to Planned Parenthood. Here’s the whole text:
(Photo is of a list of places in several counties where you can get family planning services. Note that one of the counties in the list contains no family planning clinics and lists no options.)
I have a primary care physician who does my gyno care. This tells me, in effect, that I’m going to have to find another gyno to do that, because my insurance company won’t reimburse my PCP for a visit where she mentions birth control.
Now, what my personal medical needs are, are immaterial to this discussion, but I am making this post because I know a lot of people are trying to choose plans right now. And it is NOT OBVIOUS that Fidelis is a Catholic company– they changed their name from Catholic Health Plan of NYS for that reason, I think.
So– BE AWARE, because they’re sure as hell not going to make it obvious.
I don’t know if this is legal in any other states, or if Fidelis exists in any other states, but LOOK FOR THIS KIND OF THING when you sign up!! Explicitly CHECK TO MAKE SURE.
I am going to switch away from Fidelis not because I can’t stand to go to Planned Parenthood, but because I don’t want to support a company in any way that feels it can dictate my health choices because of its religious beliefs.
Thank you for the clarification! Excellently researched!
As the article states, it’s clearly not something that’s obvious when you’re signing up for healthcare. It shouldn’t be legal, and yet, they do it. And they don’t exactly announce that they’re doing it.
This is not anti-Nicole Kidman but more of a spotlight on the ones in control of the Emmys. The ones who softly played off others, allowed Nicole to speak on to her liking with no orchestra to play her off, but then cut a historic moment and equally important speech with blaring music and a mic cut. Luckily, however, Sterling was able to finish his speech backstage [x].
SliceOSunshine 