This past Thursday afternoon, April 12th, local Philadelphian patron, Melissa DePino filmed and posted a video that has now gone viral of two men being arrested at a local Philadelphia Starbucks while waiting for a family friend to arrive at the location.
In her caption, DePino writes the following, "The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything. They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing."
Customers and citizens at the scene were in a state of shock as the police arrested the two black men as one citizen in a grey vest came to their defense asking the authorities, “What did they get called for? ’Cause there are two black guys sitting here meeting me?”
The officer's answer is inaudible as the concerned citizen asked again, “What did they do?” while another woman in attendance can be heard saying, “They didn’t do anything. I saw the entire thing.”
Later, a longer clip of the incident was posted to YouTube, and an officer can be heard exclaiming to the surrounding people in attendance that the two men were being arrested for "trespassing." The same man in defense of the arrestees called their actions pure discrimination.
The two unidentified men who later were revealed as real estate brokers were released at 1:30 am Saturday morning without being charged with any criminal activity. A spokesperson for the Philadelphia District's Attorney Office, Ben Waxman spoke with HuffPost stating, “We declined to bring charges against the two men because there was a lack of evidence that a crime was committed.”
With the Starbucks establishment/employees responsible for calling the authorities, both the Philadelphia Police Department and Starbucks Corporation are now looking further into the incident and have released informal statements about what took place Thursday afternoon. Luckily, the customers in attendance stood up for their fellow citizens and in the face of injustice and what appears to be blatant prejudice and the two men were able to go home without being brought up on fallacious criminal charges.
