PUBLISHED 3:12 PM ET Mar. 10, 2018PUBLISHED March 10, 2018 @3:12 PM
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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.