The owner of a San Francisco ice cream shop has spoken out after video emerged of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters confronting police at an event called “Ice cream with a cop”.
Alice Kim, the owner of Joe’s Ice Cream shop in the city’s Richmond neighbourhood, said she agreed to host the community event on Saturday 29 April after she was approached by a local community leader.
What she did not expect was a “defund the police” protest to unfold at her shop, with the protesters using a megaphone to shout slogans such as “Black Lives Matter” and “F*** the police”.
“Some people came and reported incidents to police, but then we heard loud music and people shouting through a megaphone,” said Ms Kim in an interview with SF Gate. “We couldn’t understand because it was so loud”.
The video of the protest, which was uploaded to Instagram by DoggTown Dro – an activist and rapper reportedly from Watsonville, a town almost 90 miles south of San Francisco – showed the group confront police outside the ice cream shop.
The group also spoke about Keita O’Neil, a Black woman allegedly killed by a San Francisco Police Department officer in 2017. That officer is currently on trial on voluntarily manslaughter charges.
“Joe’s Ice Cream held a Copaganda Event where Police hand out ice cream Tokens and ‘Jr. SFPD’ stickers to people,” wrote DoggTown Dro in a caption. “Seven – nine Police Officers with NO BODY CAMERAS stood around doing NOTHING for two hours.”
“The money San Francisco WASTED could’ve house someone for an entire year or MORE!,” continued the activist, whose real name is reportedly Adroa Anderson. “THIS is why we need to defund San Francisco Police Department now”
Ms Kim, who appeared in the video along with her husband, said she did not realise why protesters were annoyed at her husband for saying the ice cream shop owners were also “victims” of crime such as break-ins.
A protester can be heard saying in the video: “A window break-in over Black lives? Come on now”.
“We didn’t understand the terms they used and what was going on,” Ms Kim said of the exchange. “If we understood better we can react better. But no one explained it to us and we don’t understand what that means. We can’t properly react.”
She added that the video that appeared on Instagram “only used the parts they want to show,” and that “The customers were scared, kids were crying and I don’t think they posted all of that.”
Ms Kim explained that she and her husband are both first-generation immigrants from Korea and that their English was not perfect, although she did try to reason with the protesters.
“They said we were white supremacists and just trying to make money and don’t care about other people’s lives,” Ms Kim said.
The controversy follows calls for police departments across the US to introduce major reforms to stop brutality committed against the Black community following the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, in May 2020.
The San Francisco Police Department, which has introduced some changes, was recently a subject of reports about its media relations department – which Mission Local reports has an annual staffing budget of f $1.6m (£1.3m) to deal with public relations.
The Independent has approached the police department and Joe’s Ice Cream for comment.
