Lake Alfred Police Officer Adam Leatherberry and another officer went to get food Sunday at Tropical Smoothie Café in downtown Winter Haven, Florida.
One of the staff members, later identified as Jake Hadden, looked at them and said, “hell no!” and then told another worker that “I’m not serving them, you can… it’s the cops! I refuse to serve them,” according Leatherberry
The cops did not want to take any chances and left. Leatherberry says he wanted to avoid any ‘extra sauces’ in his food.
A spokeswoman with the Lake Alfred Police Dept called Hadden a “bone head.”
WFLA has received a lot of messages on social media about the story, in support of the officers. The management at Tropical Smoothie took very swift action and fired Hadden immediately.
“This is not who we are we do not operate like that… to all the law enforcement officers, please feel free to come to our store,” manager Beth Lawrence said.
Hadden told the local station he regrets what he said, especially with everything going on around the country with law enforcement right now.
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We have a string on the LEOAFFAIRS.COM message board titled “Businesses That Refuse Service Or Benefits to LEOs” and this story has been added to it. The string contains similar stories about law enforcement officers being refused services at businesses, mostly restaurants. Here’s a link in case you want to check it out:
http://forums.leoaffairs.com/showthread.php?451420-Businesses-That-Refuse-Service-Or-Benefits-to-LEOs&p=2666287#post2666287