LEO Free food

[Poconnor]

Many restaurants and other businesses have discounts for police and EMS. I avoided places that were free. A few officers I worked with flocked to theses places. It was always the same guys. These guys would abuse it so much that the businesses would stop the freebies. When I first got out of the academy I was adamant about not accepting gratuities. I was taught is was unethical and unprofessional. Then I went to get coffee and insisted I pay which made the teenage girl at the counter cry because she thought her boss would fire her. I learned to take the coffee and leave a big tip. Personally I did not care about the discount. I just wanted them not to spit or worse in my food. The best favor a business could do for me was to have a clean employee bathroom and let me use it. Today I tell businesses if the want extra police presence - give the officers your WiFi password. You will get a guy on night shift sitting in the parking lot half his shift.

[farscott]

Our practice is that we always pick up the tab for any uniformed (credentials in plain clothes count as well) LE or .mil personnel that happen to be dining in the restaurant when we are. Just ask the manager for the bills, quietly pay them, and go about our business. Chick-Fil-A is an exception because franchise policy is uniformed LE eats for free.

We live outside a small town and am not aware of a city or county regulation that would not allow the officers/deputies to accept a free meal. After a tornado damaged many of the homes on our street, including ours, and we had a curfew imposed, we had a deputy stationed nearby. We brought coffee, bottled water, and hot meals to the deputy on duty as common courtesy as there was nothing open, the power grid was down, and the weather was not pleasant. We had a generator and were able to walk to where the deputy's vehicle was parked.

[LockedBreech]

Growing up with a dad who was a State Trooper for 20 years and a town cop for 4, he and I share a bit of melancholy about how things have changed. I still routinely offer to pay for LE and uniformed military and most of the time they say it's against their policy. My dad said during his time he just about never paid for coffee but would buy breakfast and leave a nice tip when he had time to eat, and everyone understood it and everyone was happy with it. Utterly uncontroversial.

I hope this era of everything being under a microscope passes, even as a relatively young guy I find it dismaying. I would like to buy a guy a sandwich without it being a federal case.

[Rex G]

The tricky part about free or reduced-price food for LEOs is not so much an actual law being broken, but the “appearance of impropriety.” So, by making a public showing of paying for LEOs’ food, it can put them on the spot, for PD regs, especially now that we live in the United States of Surveillance, or, just plain ol’ unwanted public scrutiny. And, of course, in an establishment that already provides a discreet special deal for LEOs, it can put the establishment in an uneasy public spotlight.

A better way is to pay for LEOs’ food at a place where the bill is presented after they are seated/served. Quietly approach the manager, or their waiter/waitress, and pay the LEOs’ bill. Remain anonymous. This solves the impropriety factor. If the LEO then tries to pay the bill, and feels uncomfortable with the arrangement, he/she then has a private, rather than public dilemma. My former employer had a way to ethically handle anonymous donations, in a way that benefited the entire work force, rather than the individual officer.

[fixer]

My wife and I paid for a College Station PD officer's lunch at Chic Fil A and gave him a gift card.

No apparent drama or rule-breaking there...

[Hambo]

I didn't look for discounts but I refuse them. In some ethnic places there is no insult worse than refusing hospitality. I had a captain who nearly got in a fight with an old Slavic lady because she didn't want us to pay, and he was a by the book guy. He did not win us any friends that day.

[MI Law]

Our old policy was basically "no free or discounted stuff ever" but it was never enforced. Our Timmy Hortons gives us free coffee and I was going through the drive-thru in field training and they wouldn't let me pay. My FTO was able to talk the employee into letting us pay. As we pulled away from the drive-thru, my FTO waved to my chief, LT, and Sgt that were laughing at us through the window from inside the restaurant while they were sitting inside drinking their (free) coffee. It was one of several things that struck me as odd when I started here...

Our policy was recently updated and basically says "no free or discounted stuff if there is any expectation of special treatment in return." I think it's a sensible policy and like others have said, it's very offensive to some people if you refuse to accept a well-intentioned gift. We work in an area that is generally pro-LE and small business owners appreciate us. We have a local restaurant that drops off a whole meal (entire turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, etc.) for the guys that work Christmas, another deli provides box lunches for the guys that work New Years, and another restaurant drops off food for Thanksgiving. Mission BBQ drops off a ton of food randomly every few months for the whole department and they just catered our department awards ceremony (but I don't think that was free because we have a local law firm that sponsors the food.)

I think there is an issue when guys start expecting or requesting discounts. We have had that happen and those guys were dealt with.

[MD7305]

There are extremes to everything. I've seen those that seek out the free meals and go to those establishments for breakfast, lunch, and dinner accepting free meals and that's embarrassing in my opinion (officer is no longer). Then I've seen the near fist fight anger of a person trying to buy an officer a meal who would not allow it. Where I work there's really no free meals but most places will not charge for your drink or give a discount. You could argue with some cashier's until you were blue in the face and they'd still insist on giving you a discount. I always repeatedly offer to pay full but I'm not going to cause a scene if they refuse. If there's a tip jar, etc. I try to make up the difference.
In drive thrus I've had people in line ahead if me pay and they drive off with no way to refuse. In those cases I try to pay for the person behind me.
I really appreciate folks trying to do nice things for officers but as someone else said I appreciate having a clean, safe (no secret ingredients) place to eat and a clean restroom.

[Gray01]

During my entire career it was my habit to not frequent any venue that knew that I was even remotely associated with LE. My normal dietary routine was to eat about 2 hours before, and anytime after. Water only on duty, brought from home in my go bag. (First in metal .mil canteens, then plastic bottles when they became ubiquitous.)

[Rock185]

Nope. I spent 30+ years in LE. Free or reduced price food or drink was considered a gratuity, and was strictly prohibited. I don't know how many times I had to explain to restaurant personnel that offered, sometimes insisted, on giving free or half price food or drink that it was not allowed. I always made sure I left enough money on the table to cover full price for anything. One manager got very vocal, while other customers waited in line behind me to pay their bills, insisting I pay only half. As I recall, I went back to the table and left enough money to pay full price plus tip. If it got back to the dept. that a place insisted on giving any kind of break on food or drink, a dept. representative contacted the establishment to explain dept. policy prohibited such gratuities, etc. If the establishment persisted, the establishment was placed Off Limits to on duty personnel.