The story of the NYPD officers who claimed they were “poisoned” by Shake Shack employees has now gotten one step more absurd, as the officers reportedly never had any symptoms at all. On the night of June 15, multiple police unions came forward to accuse employees at a Manhattan Shake Shack of poisoning police officers out of sympathy with Black Lives Matter protesters. It was soon determined that there was no poison involved, but now The New York Post has reported that the officers had no symptoms, and the whole thing was made up.
After an investigation showed that there was no poison in the offending Shake Shack, many Twitter users joked that the police were likely lactose intolerant, and mistook digestive discomfort for a deadly dose. The truth may be even more surprising, however, since the Post reported that it was the officers’ sergeant who suspected the poisoning, not the actual cops involved. The outlet pored over police records and public records and interviewed police sources to construct the clearest picture yet of this incident.
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The three officers involved in the “poisoning” scandal were down from their usual beat in the Bronx to help with protests in Manhattan. They reportedly ordered their milkshakes via a mobile app, giving the Shake Shack employees no way of knowing that they were police. The officers picked up their shakes, took a few sips and decided something was off about them, throwing them away. They accepted vouchers for free food in the future from the manager.
At that point, the officers told their sergeant about the incident, and things escalated. They reportedly called in an Emergency Service Unit to set up a crime scene at Shake Shack nearly two hours after the suspicious milkshakes were served. The three officers, meanwhile, were rushed to a hospital, where they were examined and released without showing any symptoms whatsoever.
That is not what their superior told police unions in an email blast, however. A Bronx Lieutenant reportedly claimed that six cops “started throwing up after drinking beverages they got from Shake Shack on 200 Broadway.” About an hour and a half later, the Detectives Endowment Association was up in arms about police being “intentionally poisoned” by fast-food workers.
It was clear by the next morning that there was “no criminality” involved in this scandal, yet by then the story had gone viral. It took days for the hashtag “Boycott Shake Shack” to stop trending, and for the public to understand what had really happened. The police unions involved have now deleted their tweets and walked back their statements on this non-crime.
