Cops in New York City falsely accused a Shake Shack last year of poisoning three officers' milkshakes. The manager of the Shake Shack, Marcus Gilliam, is suing them for defamation and for illegally detaining him as part of the scam, apparently an attempt to generate sympathy for police during protests against the George Floyd murder.
The three officers, one of whom is identified as Richard Roe, had been on protest detail following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor when they stopped at a Lower Manhattan Shake Shack to pick up strawberry, vanilla and cherry shakes. The suit, filed Monday, states that the officers placed the order via a mobile application and that the drinks were packaged and waiting for them prior to their arrival. … According to the lawsuit, the officers later told their sergeant that Gilliam had put a "toxic substance" believed to be bleach in their shakes. The sergeant arrived at the store and declared it a crime scene and Gilliam and his coworkers were unlawfully detained, the suit states.
Also sued are two police "unions", the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) and the Detectives' Endowment Association (DEA), who continued falsely claiming the officers were poisoned even after Gilliam and his employees were cleared.
Police are often caught falsely claiming to have been poisoned by fast food workers. In Indianapolis, one officer falsely accused a McDonalds of serving him partially-eaten food. An officer in Kansas wrote 'pig' on his own Starbucks cup in another effort to create viral sympathy for police. One in Los Angeles claimed to have found a tampon in his frapuccino, but it was obviously not a tampon and Starbucks forcefully debunked the claim with CCTV footage.
