OAKLAND, CA (KRON/CNN) - A coffee shop relatively new to Oakland is enforcing a policy that harkens back to the area's sometimes tumultuous relationship with police.
The shop wants uniformed officers to stay out and refuses to serve them.
"We have a policy of asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves" unquote,” one officer said he was told when he entered Hasta Muerte Coffee Shop on Feb. 27 on Fruitvale and East 27th Street.
The coffee shop wrote about the incident on their Instagram account but word has gotten out to the community.
Some support Hasta Muerte's decision. Others do not.
"I had some good officers come to me yesterday,” said Gabriel Ortiz, the owner La Perla Puerto Rican Cuisine, a neighboring business. "Why (would) you do that? I mean, for me, personally, there's no place for any merchant to have that mentality in my city."
One Oakland resident said she felt the coffee shop is trying to protect some customers who may have had negative interactions with police.
"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,” said the woman who did not reveal her identity. “You're not taking into account that that triggers people."
Right or wrong, it appears to be legal said 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 said.
The restaurant's management declined to be interviewed for this story.
Gallo says he wants to try to help bridge the gap between the coffee shop and police.
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