Oakland, CA -- A coffee shop relatively new to Oakland, California is enforcing a policy that harkens back to the area's sometimes tumultuous relationship with police.

Hasta Muerte Coffee Shop wants uniformed officers to stay out, and refuses to serve them.

Back in February, after eating at the shop, an officer was told, "We have a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves."

The coffee shop wrote about the incident on their Instagram account and word has gotten out to the community. Some folks support the shop’s decision, others do not.

"I had some good officers come to me yesterday. Latinos, to complain to me,” businessman Gabriel Ortiz says.

Ortiz owns La Perla Puerto Rican Cuisine and he says he knows the Latino officer who the coffee shop refused to serve.

"Why? Why you do that? I mean, for me, personally, there's no place for any merchant to have that mentality in my city," Ortiz says. 

An Oakland resident who asked not to reveal her identity says she feels the coffee shop is trying to protect some customers who may have had negative interactions with Oakland police.

"Rough Riders, Night Riders, and planting evidence and Oscar Grant," she says. "When you bring an armed and uniformed police officer into the community's safe places, just where we live, without taking that history into account, you're not taking into account PTSD. You're not taking into account that that triggers people." 

Right or wrong...it appears to be legal says Oakland City Council member Noel Gallo

"They're within their legal rights to do that and certainly the legal folks have expressed that to me," Gallo says.

The restaurant's management declined to be interviewed for this story.

Noel Gallo says he wants to try to help bridge the gap between the coffee shop and police.

 

Last Friday February 16th a police (OPD) entered our shop and was told by one of our worker-owners that “we have a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves.” Since then, cop supporters are trying to publicly shame us online with low reviews because this particular police visitor was Latino. He broadcasted to his network that he was “refused service” at a local business and now the rumblings are spreading. 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. OPDs recent attempts to enlist officers of color and its short term touting of fewer officer involved shootings does not reverse or mend its history of corruption, mismanagement, and scandal, nor a legacy of blatant repression. The facts are that poc, 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. For these reasons and so many more, we need the support of the actual community to keep this place safe, not police.  Especially in an area faced by drug sales and abuse, homelessness, and toxic masculinity as we see here on this block. We want to put this out to our communities now, in case we end up facing backlash because as we know OPD, unlike the community, has tons of resources, many of which are poured into maintaining smooth public relations to uphold power. It will be no surprise if some of those resources are steered toward discrediting us for not inviting them in as part of the community.

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