Canal Street Online Manchester

Starbucks to help fight Hate Crime

Starbucks to help fight Hate Crime

Global coffee giant, Starbucks has joined a new initiative to offer safe haven to LGBT people from hate crime.

All 2,000 of the coffee chain’s staff in Seattle are now to receive training in reporting hate crime as part of an idea launched by a local gay cop Jim Ritter.

The branches of Starbucks in Seattle have signed up to this new initiative to offer safe haven to LGBT people subjected to hate crimes.

The Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) Safe Place program is the brainchild of Ritter who is a SPD veteran of 30 years.

He says he launched the Safe Place program earlier this year, so that businesses could become LGBT allies - with staff trained in how to call 911 to report hate crimes and to offer a safe space to victims until police arrive at the scene.

Sadly, the program was partly inspired by an increase in reported hate crimes against LGBT people, particularly in the Capitol Hill area; the location of several of the city’s LGBT businesses.

It was also designed to help increase trust in the SPD and to assure the Seattle LGBT communities that the police take hate crime seriously.

Starbucks has announced its participation in the program.

Hate crime is of course, a global problem and we applaud this stance and hope that other businesses large and small will follow this impressive lead. Lets all watch this space.

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Published: 12-Nov-2015: (3401)

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