DEA’s Justified Boycott

When asked last week by this newspaper’s Mark Toor about a boycott the Detectives Endowment Association organized against Dunkin’ Donuts after an employee at one of its Bedford-Stuyvesant stores balked at a request for ice cream from two Detectives, allegedly saying, “I don’t serve cops,” policing expert Lance LoRusso called it a first, although such service refusals were not uncommon nationally.

Perhaps the attention generated by the DEA move, which has been supported by at least two other city police unions, will reinforce—especially in cases where corporations award franchises to individuals—a fundamental fact: when you are in a service business, you don’t have the right to refuse service to customers because you don’t like something about them, whether it’s their politics, sexual orientation or occupation.