Coffee chain chief supports barista

[littlewolf]

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/25622693-41/boersma-dutch-bros-shooting-barista.csp

Coffee chain chief supports barista
Dutch Bros.’ top executive says it is reviewing its gun policy and security procedures after a fatal shooting

BY JACK MORAN
The Register-Guard
Published: Saturday, Dec 4, 2010 05:01AM

The barista who fatally shot a would-be robber at a Dutch Bros. coffee kiosk in Eugene on Nov. 24 broke company rules by taking a gun to work, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be welcomed back if and when he’s ready to return to the job, the company’s top executive said Friday.
Travis Boersma, a Grants Pass resident whose drive-through coffee chain includes more than 150 locations in five states, said during a telephone interview that he supports the employee for taking action to defend himself during the robbery attempt.
“Under this unique circumstance, the (barista) who went through this horrific event did everything to protect his own life,” Boersma said.
Lane County prosecutors determined as much earlier this week when they reviewed a police investigation into the incident and concluded that the Dutch Bros. worker — a man in his 20s who has not been publicly identified — would face no criminal charges in connection with the shooting.

snip

Police have not said whether they know the identity of the man who reportedly fled before officers arrived to investigate the shooting.
Boersma said the barista was working alone when Combs and his accomplice approached the stand and tried to rob it.
Boersma declined to provide further details regarding the incident, and acknowledged that police have released limited information about the case, which remains under investigation.
The man who shot Combs has worked for Dutch Bros. nearly three years. Boersma said he did not know how long the employee had been taking a gun with him to work, but that the barista is trained and experienced with firearms.
Dutch Bros. — a company that Boersma said was “built on love and relations” — prohibits employees from carrying guns while at work. But the policy violation won’t cost the barista his job, Boersma said.

snip

The company has offered the man counseling and placed him on paid leave for one month. Boersma said he has spoken with his employee several times since the shooting.
“He’s been through a lot, and we’re giving him our whole support,” Boersma said. “When he’s ready to come back, we’ll be ready to have him back.”

[TheWraith]

1. Good for them.

Reminds me of a story the other night on Worst Persons in the World: a convenience store attendant followed a robber to the parking lot, and got the guy's plate number, so he got arrested. Then the clerk got fired for "leaving the work area without permission." It's a stark divide between the right way and the wrong way to treat employees.

[sharesunited]

2. How was the robbery attempted? With a gun?

I have one (1) point which I am waiting to award the employee and this story, but not if it was a guns-as-solution-to-guns situation.

If the robbery was attempted with a gun, then zero points awarded. Guns and ammo would just be the scourge we all know them to be (whether we care to admit it or not).

[littlewolf]

3. from the link

quote"A police log entry indicates that the worker called 911 at 9 p.m. to report he had exchanged gunfire with a man who tried to rob the kiosk at 2115 Franklin Blvd. The suspected robber, 27-year-old Eugene resident Sirus Combs, was pronounced dead at the scene."unquote

[one-eyed fat man]

4. Oh sure

You would be so much happier had the guy not only had to face two to one odds with only the bad guys having guns.

In your fantasy land crooks wouldn't know how to smuggle them in with whatever you have been smoking that makes you think armed robbers wouldn't hurt you if you give them what they want.

[diane in sf]

7. If someone points a gun at me they've sacrificed their right to live.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[Leftist Agitator]

10. So what should the guy have done?

Gotten shot?

Seriously, I've read your post 5 times now, and it still doesn't make a bit of sense.

So if the robbery was attempted with a knife, it wouldn't have been a "guns-as-solution-to-guns situation".

So that would be A-OK as far as you're concerned, right?

Now do you want to elaborate on your post a bit?

[sharesunited]

11. That's my consistent standard in the justification scorekeeping.

If use of a gun starts the trouble, then defensive use of a gun adds precisely zero to the justification for guns and ammo in the hands of the public.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[sharesunited]

13. Access to guns and ammo is what is killing innocents.

And a fetishist is as a fetishist does.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

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[Leftist Agitator]

15. No, criminal intentions are killing innocents.

I fail to see why you make a distinction between one instrument that is used to perpetrate violence and another.

[sharesunited]

16. Because of the convenience and lethality thereof, without struggle and escaping bloodstains.

[X_Digger]

25. For such an implement that has such 'convenience and lethality' they do a poor job..

There are ~300m firearms in the US.

There are approximately 400k non-fatal gun crimes each year (DOJ's BJS), ~9k firearm homicides (FBI), and about 17k firearm suicides (CDC's WISQARS, 2007).

That's 426,000 out of 300,000,000.

That's a little over one tenth of one percent- 0.142 % of all firearms.

99.858 times out of a 100, a gun isn't used to create a 'bloodstain'.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/firearmnonfatalno.cfm
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_11.html
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html

[Euromutt]

38. True, but the discrepancy isn't because firearms aren't effective

I've long suspected that shares subscribes to the theological doctrine of total depravity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_depravity) and believes something along the lines that the only thing preventing your average person from committing violent offenses is laziness. Assuming my suspicion is correct, shares' fixation with firearms is thus readily explicable by the fact that, in his view, these devices permit such a person to inflict violence while remaining lazy, and are therefore doubly sinful (since with blades, bludgeons or personal force, you have to overcome your laziness).

The reason shares' dogma does not survive the frontal collision with reality (namely that only a small percentage of gun owners commit violent offenses, and only a small percentage of privately owned firearms are used to commit violent crimes, as illustrated by your statistics above, X_Digger) is that empirical evidence indicates that the overwhelming majority of people have more, and stronger, psychological barriers to visiting violence upon their fellow man than the fact that they're too lazy to swing a knife or a bat. Since 2002, there have been fewer than 2 million serious violent crimes (agg. assault, robbery, rape and homicide) in the U.S. annually (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/4meastab.cfm), which means that, even assuming that every offense is committed by a different person (which is demonstrably untrue), fewer than 1 person in 150 is a serious violent offender.

[X_Digger]

39. That would make sense..

If you pivot the figures for the number of gun owners and the number of violent crimes and suicides committed with guns, the same rarity holds.

35-45% of households have at least one firearm (various sources). If there are 260 m people over 12 (US Census Bureau), that's about 100,000,000 people who theoretically have access to at least one gun.

426k out of 100m is still less than half a percent. 99.574% of those who have access to at least one firearm do NOT misuse them.

[one-eyed fat man]

49. I believe you are on to something!

Note his glowing description of the miscreant in Ohio after he learned the killer did not merely shoot his victims.

Ohio slaying victims stabbed, not shot.

"What a wild savage the killer must have been. Nothing convenient or expeditious about this crime. Certainly nothing as simple as pulling a trigger. It took much greater guile and determination."

It's all about "sweat equity" for him. No lazy bastard would stalk a family for weeks, stab and bludgeon them to death, dismember them and stuff them into a hollow tree.

How many points was keeping the teen-age daughter chained in a basement worth?

[Euromutt]

50. That was one of the posts I was thinking of, yes

Another thing that led me to that surmise is that when shares brings up his favorite flawed analogy--child pornography--he doesn't seem able to grasp why child pornography can be declared illegal without running afoul of the First Amendment.

It is, of course, that the production of child pornography necessarily involves performing sexual acts with a non-consenting person (since a minor is legally incapable of giving consent); in this regard, it is analogous to human sacrifice not being protected by freedom of religion, or the discharging of firearms with reckless disregard for the safety of oneself and (more importantly) others not being protected by the right to keep and bear arms. Instead, shares seems to be under the impression that the problem with child pornography is that it is pornography, not necessarily that it involves non-consenting subjects.

Maybe my perception is colored by my cultural background, but shares' arguments seem to have this strong whiff of Calvinist moralizing to them. Initially, I wondered whether it was some perverse form of Quakerist pacifism (given his use of that two-faced prick Smedley Butler as his avatar), but as the quote about the stabbing in Ohio illustrates, shares doesn't seem to find violence especially morally repugnant, just violence committed with firearms.

[DeadEyeDyck]

51. Your links do not support your numbers

[X_Digger]

52. You're right, it's actually less..

326,090 is the 2009 number. 400k was last year or the year before

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/firearmnonfataltab.cfm

9,146 is the number from http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_11.html

And for the 17k, visit http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html then check 'suicide' under item 1 (intent), 'firearm' under 2 (cause or mechanism), and click 'submit request'. -- 17,352 deaths by suicide by firearm.

That's a total of 352,588. (even though we're kind of adding apples (2009 - FBI, DOJ) to oranges (2007 - CDC).

352,588 out of 300,000,000 = 0.118%

99.882 times out of 100, a gun is NOT used to 'create a bloodstain' (as scaresunited says).

[spin]

17. Shares please watch this video and respond ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngsKzdKNAmo

In your comment in post # 11, you ignore the fact that the employee's use of his firearm might have saved lives, if not in this incident in a future robbery. You also fail to realize that the fact the robber was shot might cause other robbers to consider not robbing other stores or coffee shops.

I remember a particular tragic subway robbery in walking distance of where I lived in Tampa.

Subway Murder Trial Starts
osted May 15, 2007 by The Tampa Tribune
Updated May 15, 2007 at 01:15 PM

***snip***

Hayes testified that she was sitting at a table in the restaurant and Miller was behind the counter. When the gunmen walked in, one wearing a bandana over his face and the other with a hood pulled down tight, Hayes thought it was a joke.

“He came up to me, showing me the gun,” Hayes said. “I had this blank look in my eyes.”

The man with the bandana began to yell to his partner that she didn’t believe it was a real robbery. Then, Hayes noticed Miller shaking and scared at the cash register. The gunman with the hood over his face – whom prosecutors said was Austin – was yelling at Miller because she could not manage to open the register.

“All I can remember him saying was ‘Girl you’re too slow. You gots to die,’ “ Hayes said.

Hayes told the gunman in front of her that she was going to walk to the register to calm Miller. To get behind the counter, Hayes had to walk through the back room. While in the back, out of view from the register, she heard a gunshot; then two more.

Hayes walked out and saw the hooded man throw Miller to the ground.

“I turned around and tried to hit him so he would stop shooting her,” Hayes said. “When I hit him, he grabbed me and he shot me.”

With a bullet in her stomach, Hayes said she opened the register. The two men grabbed some money and ran out of the store, dropping cash along the way.

“As they ran out, I saw one try to shoot me again,” Hayes said. “The gun malfunctioned. I just heard a click.
http://www.tboblogs.com/index.php/newswire/story/subawy-murder-trial-starts

Now I'm not saying that the two employees of the subway should have been armed. I am however saying that that often people who commit robberies eventually do shoot and sometimes murder the people in the stores they rob.

Obviously firearms are misused by otherwise honest people in moments of rage or often when intoxicated to cause tragedy. Still a small number of people in our society who are called criminals misuse firearms on a regular basis and are responsible for many injuries and deaths. Occasionally, an armed honest citizen is able to use his legal weapon in legitimate self defense. Usually the situation ends without any shots being fired but there are cases where the honest citizen shoots or kills the attacker.

When you say, "If use of a gun starts the trouble, then defensive use of a gun adds precisely zero to the justification for guns and ammo in the hands of the public." you appear to be implying that criminals should be allowed to allowed to enjoy the privilege of raping, pillaging and robbing the unarmed public at will without fear of ever encountering an armed civilian.

[sharesunited]

18. The object to which you attribute your salvation also emboldens the attack upon you.

The natural consequence of proliferation is incidents of misuse.

We need to slow it down, stop it, and turn it around.

Calling for more guns and ammo and easier access is wholly irresponsible. Anyone who does it is part of the problem.

[spin]

19. So then you do support the criminals.

Just like the guy in the video.

[sharesunited]

20. No, and that's not the choice. One must either be pro gun or pro criminal?

That is a faulty premise, and one which certainly must make proponents of guns and ammo and their lobbyists ecstatic to see the nation adhere to.

[spin]

26. The "criminal" in the video advocated gun control ...

and in fact said, 'I say, make them all illegal. Make all guns illegal. I break the law for a living. It doesn't bother me."

I will admit you just want to make guns scarce and hard to get. The problem is that you can never make guns and ammo scarce in a country that already has 300 million firearms and people who have been stock piling ammo for years.

The best you can do is to make it more difficult for honest citizens to own firearms. The "criminal" in the video would agree with you that this is a great idea. He will always be able to find illegal sources for his weapons and will have far less reason to fear encountering an armed homeowner or a citizen with a legally concealed weapon.

You are proposing an unworkable idea that would be a waste of time and effort and would only lead to more criminal violence.

I suspect that you know this, but just enjoy posting your idea in the Gungeon for kicks and grins. If so, please continue. It gives me and other pro-RKBA posters to opportunity to educate lurkers and to point out how foolish the people are who are anti-RKBA.

[X_Digger]

27. Spin, he doesn't think illegal drugs are readily available, either.

There's no arguing with a faulty premise that goes unaddressed.

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

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[jazzhound]

35. Oh sh*t........coffee in sinuses!!! :-/

:rofl:

[spin]

37. He loves tilting at windmills ...

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

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[Straw Man]

40. Your solution?

Calling for more guns and ammo and easier access is wholly irresponsible. Anyone who does it is part of the problem.

That's right. The responsible thing for the crime victim to do is to take one for the team: lie down and die. It's a worthwhile sacrifice in the pursuit of the Golden Future of a seamless, gun-free oasis, "from sea to shining sea." I'm sure the relatives will be proud.

Criminal misuse of objects can best be dealt with by banning said objects. Makes sense to me... :sarcasm:

[X_Digger]

24. Criminals start the trouble, regardless of implement.

Let me guess, you'd have been in like flynn with these fine ladies?




Here, let me update that for you..

[cleanhippie]

34. That is perhaps the most ignorant, asinine, infantile statement I have ever read

from you.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. More anti union crap out of you? Again?

[AtheistCrusader]

28. Nice that you see this as a game.

[cleanhippie]

33. How can you have any points to give if you never make a point at all?

[Hoopla Phil]

5. This is great news. I'm very glad to see a company

standing behind an employee that was forced into a self defense situation like this. Wish they had a place near me that I could go to and take them some business.

[spin]

6. Great. I'm also impressed that they offered counseling ...

Shooting another person, even when right, is an experience that can cause a number of problems. Often police receive counseling after a shooting.

[PavePusher]

9. Damn, they don't have any shops in Tucson yet.

I'll be making a road trip back from Salt Lake in a week or so, if I go through Phoenix, I'll purposely stop for a pick-me-up and let them know why I support them.

[RSillsbee]

22. Dutch's Coffee

There's one right down the street and I just became a lifetime customer

[Euromutt]

31. I like to get some Dutch Bros. every time I drive through Oregon

Which is admittedly not often these days, but when we're visiting my wife's family in the Bay Area, we generally stop for the night in Medford, and grab some drive-through Dutch Bros. before hitting I-5. Which is due in no small part to my being Dutch.

[RamboLiberal]

29. Now will they continue their employees can't carry guns policy?

The employee still has his job but will he be allowed to carry?

Be curious how this plays out.

If I had to work in these retail establishments at night I'd be carrying and damn what the employer policy is.

[Euromutt]

30. As the thread title says, Dutch Bros. is "reviewing its gun policy"

From the Eugene Register-Guard article cited in the OP:

Boersma said company officials initially considered permanently closing the coffee stand. But for now, it remains open.

Since the shooting, the kiosk has continued serving coffee during daytime hours, but has been closed at night. Boersma said a plan is in place to return to regular hours of operation with a private security firm stationed there “for an indefinite period of time.”

Company officials and employees are working with law enforcement and security specialists on a thorough review of Dutch Bros. safety guidelines. The no-firearms policy is one of the rules that is being scrutinized, Boersma said.

“We want to make sure (that policy) is in the best interest of our employees,” he said.

Emphasis mine.

Since the company has given the employee in question a month's paid leave, I'm figuring they're waiting until the month is up to make any decisions, hoping that by then the spotlight will be off them, so they don't get the local chapter of the Brady Campaign and the Oregon Firearms Federation playing tug-of-war with Dutch Bros. as the rope.

[jazzhound]

36. The Blue Steel Dems might have a few thoughts to share

with Dutch Bros.

:)

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

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[PavePusher]

42. Yes. And the solution would be for the workers and lawful customers to be defenseless, amIright?

[Name removed]

43. Deleted message

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[PavePusher]

44. Well, you are an amusing little troll.

"...you can always walk away..."

Right.

[Kennah]

45. Yeah

2 outta 50 states

In 40 outta 50 states, one has the right to carry. Been 23 years since Florida started a new wave in right to carry, and there's still no blood in the streets.

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

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[friendly_iconoclast]

47. Oh dear, and they were so young! Hope the pizza is tasty. n/t

[SteveM]

48. A surprising corporate policy which SUPPORTS the right to self-defense. nt