Chipotle: Our Employees Didn’t Shout “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” at Baltimore Cops
A deleted post to a private Baltimore neighborhood Facebook group details an exchange between two uniformed BPD cops and employees at a Chipotle in which the employees, on seeing the police, raised their hands and yelled “hands up, don’t shoot,” mimicking anti-police brutality protests across the country.
It happened in Brooklyn last year, and now someone appearing to be a Baltimore cop and Chipotle are at odds over whether it happened in that city, too.
Today two uniformed Baltimore Police officers walked into the Chipotle on Fort Ave for lunch. The employees raised their hands in the air shouting hands up don’t shoot. The Police officers turned around and walked out. They have lost my business.
The account appears to belong to Baltimore Police Department detective Thomas DiNunno (pictured above).
But a Chipotle corporate spokesperson told Gawker the exchange didn’t happen. “An allegation like that is something we certainly take seriously, so when we were made aware of it, we immediately looked into the situation,” communications director Chris Arnold wrote via email. “We spoke to our managers and crew in the restaurant, and no one reported having witnessed anything like that, and we reviewed security camera footage and saw no evidence of it happening. We have not seen any evidence to substantiate this claim.”
The provenance of the Facebook screenshot is somewhat murky, as the group it was posted to, South Baltimore Community by (SBNA), is private, and the original post seems to have been removed. However, Gawker observed a second screenshot taken today showing a post in the group that reads, “So here’s an update to the Chipotle thread that was removed,” and links to a tweet about the exchange.
Reached via telephone, DiNunno said he did not wish to comment and quickly hung up. BPD public information officer Jeremy Silbert told Gawker that the department has “not been notified by any member of our agency about these allegations,” and directed inquiries to DiNunno.
DiNunno previously made headlines in 2011, when the city of Baltimore paid $100,000 in a lawsuit settlement to a 65-year-old man who alleged that he was beaten by two officers who believed his hand-rolled cigarette was a joint. DiNunno is one of the two officers named in the suit.
