Starbucks Capitulates to Overzealous Police Union in Spite of In-Store Intimidation

On July 4, 2019, six police employees staggered by twos into a Starbucks store in Tempe, Arizona (which borders Phoenix to the west). Because they did not come in together, customers had a prolonged sense of a police presence throughout the store. Eventually, the police huddled near the bar where drinks were left for customers to pick up. Even as the police huddled, they did so with eyes strategically perched so as to maintain visuals on the customers. Yet this was apparently lost on the police themselves, who felt it was disrespectful for an employee to ask them to leave after a customer complained about feeling uncomfortable. It could not be assumed that the customer had had bad experiences with police in the past, for any customer would understandably feel uncomfortable with so many visible guns passing back and forth. Indeed, for the police to treated the customers to the display can be reckoned as disrespectful!  Unfortunately, the police probably had no recognition of having too many at once in the store because intimidation as a deterrent by a very visible, ubiquitous presence in the public (and apparently in restaurants) was at the time the standard tactic. In short, customers could be expected to feel uncomfortable, or at least to want some relief from the ubiquitous police presence. Even so, Starbucks apologized because an employee acted on behalf of a customer, whose complaint was valid given the overwhelming police presence in the store. Yet according to the Tempe Association of police, the customer and employee should have known that some of the cops were veterans so the errant conclusion is zero respect for vets.[1] The association was so busy feeling disrespected that no thought at all went into why customers could rightly feel uncomfortable with so many police in a small store.

The full essay is at "Overzealous Police Presence."

1. Amir Vera, “Starbucks Apologizes after Six Officers Say They Were Asked to Leave a Store in Arizona,” cnn.com July 6, 2019.

Interestingly (or tellingly), the police chose to leave rather than move away from where customers pick up drinks, and yet the police chief felt that Starbucks had disrespected the police in the store. 

Constricting Debate in the Public Square: The Case of Gun Control

The managements of large corporations attempt and, I submit, often succeed at keeping the most financially threatening alternatives in public policy off the public’s radar by pressuring media and using public relations campaigns. As U.S. president Obama’s health-insurance proposal was being debated in Congress, health insurance companies deftly either kept the single-payer proposal off the media’s discussion or relegated the policy as radical. This term, if stuck to a proposed policy, is the kiss of death in a society of incremental change. Such change, if the only game in town, can unfortunately come to be viewed as constituting major change. The gun-control debate in February, 2018 after the shooting of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida is a case in point.

The full essay is at "The Constricted Debate on Gun Control."

States Move Beyond Congress on Gun Control

On April 4, 2013, the government of Connecticut passed “a sweeping new set of gun control reforms.” Colorado and New York had already passed their respective versions of “sweeping gun legislation,” all in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut the previous December. 

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.