A Popeyes employee has been fired after a cop in Texas claimed his food had been tampered with. According to the San Antonio Police Depa...
A Popeyes employee has been fired after a cop in Texas claimed his food had been tampered with.
According to the San Antonio Police Department Officer A. Martinez said he heard the fast food restaurant worker making derogatory remarks about members of law enforcement while getting his meal of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy at the drive-thru.
The cop claims that he had already begun to eat the meal then saw 'ACAB' – an abbreviation for 'all cop are b*****ds' - written inside in black marker and noticed what looked like saliva on his food.
Martinez said he believed he had earlier heard the staff member yell 'ACAB' while he was waiting for his order in the drive-thru 'but thought nothing of it.'
A San Antonio Police Department officer claims he heard a Popeyes employee yell 'ACAB' while waiting in the drive-thru for his order last Wednesday at 9pm
The cop said he was dressed in full uniform at the time and when his meal arrived he saw 'ACAB' written on the box and what looked like saliva on his chicken, gravy and mashed potatoes
He said he was dressed in full uniform at the time of the incident last Wednesday at 9pm.
The officer called an investigator to the scene and took photos of the evidence and his receipt, his department said. The cop then tossed out the meal.
An incident report said the same department was investigating the incident as a hate crime and noted that although there wasn't a suspect they had the receipt with a timestamp of the purchase to help them.
The probe will focus on the alleged food tampering, not the writing on the packaging.
Police spokesperson Doug Greene told DailyMail.com on Thursday that there no charges have been pressed as of yet and they are awaiting for Popeyes to provide them with security camera footage from two different angles.
Popeyes said it had apologized to the cop involved and the worker was no longer employed by them after the alleged derogatory remark at the Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen 14107 Nacogdoches Road location.
'We want to apologize to the guest involved,' a company spokesperson wrote.
'The actions of the team member do not reflect the values of our brand nor the high level of service we strive to deliver to our guests. The team member no longer works at the restaurant and the owner has reached out to the officer to personally apologize.'
Police spokesperson Doug Greene said the force has a number of trusted restaurants it visits and they are largely welcomed in the community.
However he wasn't entirely surprised when he heard the story.
'Things like this do happen and it happens here in this community, it happens at establishments throughout the country,' Greene said. 'But here in San Antonio there's just such a supportive, hospitable community that it's something that we rarely see.
'This has been a reality for police officers for quite some time because of the job that we do. There are some people who have negative outlooks, negative experiences.'
He added to News 4 San Antonio: 'Unfortunately in this line of work, this is something we are subjected to unfortunately because not all people have those same views. Again, when this case came to our attention, we were disappointed but not surprised.'
Police spokesperson Doug Greene said Popeyes was one of their trusted restaurants in the community and added: 'I'm sure that same officer would be there to protect and serve that establishment if it came to it'
'I'm sure that same officer would be there to protect and serve that establishment if it came to it,' police spokesperson Doug Greene said in an interview with My San Antonio.
'We're just going to go ahead and investigate it like we investigate every case and hopefully we come to some kind of peaceful resolution.'
The incident last Wednesday came amid uprisings over police brutality and a day after officers from the department unjustly arrested a black man out jogging in a case of mistaken identity.
On August 25 a woman called police saying her ex-husband strangled her. He was described as a black man wearing a green shirt who fled on foot.
Two police officers ended up arresting Mathias Ometu, a 33-year-old insurance adjuster for USAA who was on his afternoon jog in a bright green shirt, because he refused to speak with officers, asserting his right not to answer, and insisted he was just working out.
Ometu was charged with two felony counts of assaulting a peace officer and spent two days in the Bexar County Jail following the arrest.
This week it was determined the officers 'acted appropriately.'
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