Starbucks Declares It Is A ‘LGBT Safe Place’ – Employee Training To Sensitize Workforce On Hate Crimes

Starbucks has declared its shops are a “Safe Place” for the LGBT community. The coffee house chain confirmed its Seattle stores are now officially LGBT friendly, and the workforce has been trained to be sensitive to the issues faced by the community.

Starbucks announced Wednesday that its Seattle stores are officially “Safe Places” for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community. The chain has chosen to participate in the “Safe Place” program initiated by the Seattle Police Department.

Spearheaded by openly gay Seattle Police Officer Jim Ritter, “Safe Place” is a campaign to address the issue of hate crimes against the LGBT community. Though we do not have hate squads roaming the streets looking for their next victims, the LGBT community has always been a soft and easy target, said Ritter.

“We don’t have roving bands of people assaulting LBGTQ people as we did in the ’80s. [But] the crimes are predatory; they’re picking somebody out of the herd. They’re cowards for the most part… They’re opportunistic, they do their damage and leave. They like operating in the shadows and Safe Place eliminates a lot of those shadows.”

What Ritter clearly implied was these extra set of eyes will certainly help the marginalized LGBT community feel much safer in their own neighborhood. Knowing well they have a protective environment, which has people who will look out for them, will grant them the confidence of living a normal life. The LGBT community won’t have to go about their daily routine while cloaking their true sexual identity just to blend in. Though the society does have many anti-social elements that are hell-bent on harassing them, the “Safe Place” program will accord a safety net to the LGBT community.

All 97 of Starbucks’ stores in the Seattle area will finish employee training early next week on “how to respond to and engage with LGBT victims of violence and effectively report hate crimes to police.” Essentially, chosen employees of Starbucks will be sensitized towards the issues faced by the LGBT community, most notable among them being bias crime. The “Safe Place” program, literally accords a safe place to gay and BLT people, in case they are attacked or are victims of hate crime or are simply bullied for their sexual orientation.

Starbucks has confirmed it had been working since June to ensure the program was implemented within its coffee shops. The chain has trained about 2,000 employees that will begin serving in 97 locations. As part of the “Safe Place” program, decals with the program’s emblem — a police badge colored to look like a rainbow flag – have been affixed on the windows at the Third Avenue and Pike Street store, confirmed Starbucks Seattle area regional director Heather Jennings, reported Wonkette.

Officer Jim Ritter added he has spoken with over 650 businesses across Seattle and all of them have been extremely supportive of the “Safe Place” campaign. Many of them have already displayed rainbow-badge decals on their windows, said the overjoyed police officer.

“I haven’t been turned down by a single business. It is heartening and reinforces that people in Seattle get it and don’t support hate of any kind.”

American companies have been quite supportive of LGBT rights. In fact, almost 400 companies have lent their support to nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage. Technology and soft-skills companies have openly lamented that lack of support for LGBT rights severely restricts them from hiring the best possible candidates, reported Christian Science Monitor.

Starbucks has been supportive of the LGBT community for a long time. Beside raising a brightly colored flag over its Seattle headquarters in 2014, the company’s CEO once famously admonished a shareholder, telling him he was free to sell off his shares of Starbucks and invest in some other company, reported DBTechno. Could Starbucks lending wholehearted support to the “Safe Place” program serve as an impetus to other large corporations to offer training to its employees.?

[Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images, Mladen Antonov / Getty Images, Justin Sullivan / Getty Images]