Los Alamos man says Dunkin’ incident is ‘teachable moment’
Store patron, who is black, posted video footage of being told to leave Santa Fe doughnut shop
Timothy E. Nelson, a historian and professor who lives in Los Alamos, was getting his car repaired at a Santa Fe auto shop Monday, when he stopped at a nearby Dunkin’ store on St. Francis Drive.
He bought a cup of coffee and then left the store briefly to explore a cemetery close by, he said. He also popped into the Firestone shop to check on his car a couple of times. In between trips, he returned to Dunkin’, formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts, to use the shop’s Wi-Fi. But his visit, Nelson said, was suddenly cut short.
A manager kicked him out, he said, claiming the shop has a onehour rule for patrons and accusing him of not making a purchase.
Nelson, who is black, posted a series of videos on Facebook that document the heated encounter, including a police response, and his explanation of the situation later to his 12-year-old daughter. In an interview, Nelson said he thinks the store employee probably told him to leave because he looked “suspicious.”
He sees the incident as a “teachable moment.”
“I didn’t know if it was because I was black, if it was racism or not,” he says to his daughter in one video on Facebook. “All I know is that Dunkin’ Donuts all of a sudden has a one-hour rule. I have never heard of a doughnut shop that has a rule that you can
only be in it — even after you pay for something — for an hour.”
Irene Deubel, who runs the local franchise, said she didn’t ask Nelson to leave because he is black but because she thought he hadn’t bought anything.
Nelson’s encounter at the local Dunkin’ comes at a time when coffee shops and other businesses across the country have drawn sharp criticism following similar complaints from patrons, and critics have decried a series of incidents in which white people have reported people of other races to police for dubious reasons.
Earlier this year, two black men
were arrested by Philadelphia police on suspicion of trespassing at a Starbucks. The high-profile case was resolved when the men settled with the city for $1 each and the city’s promise for a new program for young entrepreneurs. In August, a Santa Fe Allsup’s made national news when a New Orleans student visiting the city released video showing what he called explicit racial profiling by a clerk.
And within the past month, two other Dunkin’ franchises have come under fire; employees at a New York store were recorded dumping water on a sleeping man, and a worker at a Dunkin’ in Portland, Ore., refused to serve a Somali family.
Nelson, who said he started teaching an online Africana studies class at the University of New Mexico the same day as the Dunkin’ incident, didn’t file a complaint with the corporation and said he doesn’t want the employee who booted him from the shop to get fired. What he hopes to do is raise awareness.
“Some people are walking on the same streets at the same time … and they’re experiencing it completely differently because of the way their bodies are policed,” Nelson said. “It’s a tremendous problem.”
Deubel insisted she was just following a store policy. “I know what my policy is and it’s going to remain,” she said. “It’s not because he was black. It’s because he was sitting here without purchasing something. If I went to the store, I would never do that.”
And, she told The New Mexican, she never physically “threw him out of the store.”
When she told Nelson about the one-hour limit for patrons to remain in the store, Deubel said, “He went off like a madman. … He went all out of control. I mean, totally.”
A few of Nelson’s videos capture audio of the encounter inside the store.
“What you’re telling me is that I get one hour max to sit down here at your Dunkin’ Donuts?” Nelson asks. He’s not pictured on the camera.
“Well, we first are going to require you to buy something,” the woman replies.
Nelson says he did buy something and tells her to go ask other employees to confirm that. It’s unclear if Deubel did that.
The pair start to argue, interrupting each other. “You’re done,” the woman says. Nelson asks repeatedly: “Did you call the police?”
In another video, Nelson describes the encounter to police officers.
He tells police he’s frustrated because he bought a coffee at Dunkin’ and didn’t see any signs in the store about the one-hour rule. He needed somewhere to sit and use the Wi-Fi while he waited for his car at Firestone, he says.
“I completely understand where you’re coming from,” an officer says. “But it’s a place of business; it’s a private property. If they don’t want you in there, they can kick you out. … I’m sorry to tell you that.”
In the video with his daughter, Nelson explains the nuance of the situation.
His dreadlocks might intimidate some people, he says, adding that his Army jacket also could look suspicious, even though it has his name on it and was given to him when he served.
“Sometimes I forget that that could scare people, and I do things and it makes them feel a certain way,” he says.
“That’s what happened to me today, where I ended up having to talk to the police because somebody viewed me as suspicious looking.”