A Boston police union claims an Ace Hardware store employee said, “I smell bacon” while a police officer was shopping. The officer claimed the employee refused to apologize and he did not purchase any items in the store. Later, the union said Ace Hardware representatives apologized for the incident. The tweets led Ace Hardware to trend on Twitter.
The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association claimed an officer had a “bad experience” at a store in Allston, Massachusetts on Wednesday. When the officer was in the store, he overheard an employee say “I smell bacon,” a reference to the term “pig” for police officers. “When the officer asked for an apology, he was told there’d be none. In response, items purchased were returned and a customer lost,” the BPPA claimed.
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A few hours later, the union tweeted that Ace Hardware representatives reached out and spoke to the officer involved in the alleged incident. “During the conversation, an apology was offered and graciously accepted by the officer with both parties agreeing that mutual respect benefits us all,” the union said. Representatives later told Fox News the incident happened at Model Hardware, owned by Aldo Aichakir. Ace Hardware uses a co-op business model.
“As a local business in the Allston community, Model Hardware values and respects all of our customers,” Aichfakir told Fox News. He said he was “disappointed” that a customer had a negative experience. He apologized to the officer and spoke with the employee about the incident.
The BPPA’s tweets quickly went viral on Twitter, with Ace Hardware trending. The story was compared to several other incidents in which police officers reported negative experiences in stores. One Twitter user brought up a 2019 incident in Herington, Kansas, where a police officer claimed “pig” and an expletive were written on his McDonald’s coffee cup only to have to resign after it was discovered his story was not true. In another case, a Starbucks barista in Oklahoma was fired in 2019 after writing “pig” as the customer’s name for a police officer’s cup of coffee.
And the cop didn’t shoot him in the back 7 times? It’s a miracle.
— David McLemore (@dave_in_sa) September 10, 2020
Update yet you leave the story up anyway for people to share and read knowing that many won’t see the update and Ace Hardware will lose business when in reality this whole sham of a story was just deflection in the first place 🤷♀️
— Michelle (@WomanOkie) September 10, 2020
it is an accomplishment that the cop graciously accepted the apology of a local hardware store worker for saying they smelled bacon. you all should be very proud!! doing good work 💪🟦
— bob rice (@bobricebobrice) September 10, 2020
This has got to be the first time that a police union agreed that mutual respect is a value.
— (((Charlie Mas))) (@charlie_mas) September 10, 2020
That’s really good news. Great to hear that police can exact an apology for such horrible free speech infractions… now do your apology to targeted people of color that you’ve treated differently by ticketing, arresting, and possibly worse due, simply, to their skin color.
— My Wry Smile (@my_wry_smile) September 10, 2020
The Boston Police Union put out that copaganda, bogus sounding Ace Hardware story to get some public sympathy, because Boston police union president Pat Rose was arrested for child rape https://t.co/HUEwE8xq8B
— Tariq Nasheed 🇺🇸 (@tariqnasheed) September 10, 2020
The BPPA is the union previously led by Pat Rose, a retired Boston Police officer who was arrested on child rape charges. On Aug. 13, he was ordered held on $100,000 bail and pleaded not guilty, CBS Boston reports. A few days later, four new accusers came forward with allegations spanning from 1991 to 2018. The new charges included statutory rape of a child and indecent assault and battery on a child under 14. Rose was BPPA’s president from 2014 to 2018, when he retired from the Boston police force.
