Dori: Kirkland PD exonerated in Menchie’s incident — is the drama over?

Remember the story from November about the Totem Lake Menchie’s?

A 31-year-old African-American named Byron Ragland, who works as a court-appointed special advocate, went to that Menchie’s as part of his job. A mom was meeting her kid there, and he sat a few tables away to observe and make sure everything went alright.

Byron Ragland sat there, observing but not buying anything, and the two teenage girls working there became unnerved. They had no idea that he was with the mother and child just a few tables away; they said that he never explained to them why he was there, but just kept looking at his phone.

The guy who owns the Totem Lake Menchie’s, a Filipino-American named Ramon Cruz, owns a couple of other businesses in the area, which had experienced recent robberies. With those recent crimes in mind, the girls were a bit on-edge, and called the shop owner to ask for advice.

RELATED: Civil Rights attorney says Kirkland Menchie’s incident was likely racist, but question is proportionality

The shop owner, Cruz, called the Kirkland police. As we know from playing the 911 call on our show, he didn’t say, “There’s a strange black man at my yogurt shop.” He said that a guy was sitting in the shop without buying anything, and, that in light of recent incidents at his businesses, this was making his employees nervous. He asked police what he should do. The Kirkland police said that they would stop by and take a look.

The police went in, talked to Byron Ragland, and asked him to leave. You may recall, that’s the story that went national, and that’s the story that went viral — that the Kirkland police and the owner of this Menchie’s were so racist that they kicked a black man out just for sitting there.

At a press conference a few days later organized by the local NAACP chapter, Byron Ragland called for everyone to boycott the Totem Lake Menchie’s. But he didn’t stop there. He said that he wanted the two teenage girls fired because they called their boss, saying they were nervous and asking what to do.

Is that a fire-able offense, or is that what a good employee does? It would have been great if they’d had the self-confidence to ask Ragland if they could help him and sort everything out in a simple conversation, but that’s not always the way that teenagers are.

Byron Ragland then said that he wanted Cruz to be unable to renew his business license, and also said that he, Ragland, should be given the money to buy all of Cruz’s shops. I don’t know how much the three businesses are worth, but it has to be several hundred thousand dollars.

We definitely should boycott this store. Those two young ladies that were very petrified, they definitely should take a break from work, especially from the customer service realm. I think we need to make sure Ramon Cruz is unable to renew his business license here. And when the lease to this store is up, we need to make sure Byron Ragland has the capital and the resources to purchase this Menchie’s, and the two other restaurants he owns in the community. That would be a good place to start. That would make me feel a little bit better. That would be a look in the right direction. And that’s how you punish white supremacy and anti-black behavior.

So the two teenage girls should be fired, the owner of the shop should not be able to renew his business license, and Byron Ragland should get the capital to buy all of Cruz’s businesses.

Something interesting happened Friday afternoon. The Kirkland Police Department finished its investigation into the Menchie’s incident. They said that the officers did not violate department policy at all or act out of racial bias when they asked Ragland to leave the yogurt shop.

The one criticism the department did make was that the officers missed the opportunity to mediate between the shop owner and Ragland. The department announced that in response, it will have a new protocol for unwanted-person calls that encourages communications between the workers and the person being asked to leave.

But this was not in the policy previously.

Remember what a national story this was, calling out “white supremacists” in the Seattle area? The business owner was a “white supremacist and a racist,” even though he is Filipino. I have no idea of the ethnicity of the two teenage girls or the cops who responded.

Here’s the bottom line — the girls did what, honestly, I’d want my daughters to do. If you’re uneasy about something at the workplace, call the owner and ask what to do. The owner did what most of us in society would do; he called the cops. The cops went to the location and did not violate any departmental policy.

So I’m curious, Byron Ragland and NAACP — are you still calling for the firing of these two girls, for Cruz not to get a new business license, and for hundreds of thousands of dollars in reparations? Because I’m still trying to figure out who did something horrible enough to warrant a press conference that got national attention. To be continued, I’m sure.

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