The Two Black men arrested at Philadelphia Starbucks reach agreements with The City, and Coffee Company! ✊✊

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The Two Black men arrested at Philadelphia Starbucks reach agreements with The City, and Coffee Company!✊✊

Two black men arrested for sitting at a Philadelphia Starbucks without ordering anything have reached an agreement with the city, which will pay them $1 each and set up a $200,000 program for young entrepreneurs at their request.

Separately, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson also reached an agreement with Starbucks that “will include a financial settlement as well as continued listening and dialogue between the parties,” the company said in a statement. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed.

The announcements, coming just two weeks after the incident, spare the city and coffee chain a protracted spotlight on an incident that stoked national outrage and debate about race, a change in local police policies, and boycotts and protests against a brand that’s become ubiquitous in cities around the world.

In their agreement with Philadelphia, Nelson and Robinson have released the city and its employees from “any and all claims,” city spokesman Mike Dunn said.

The two men also asked the city to create a program for Philadelphia public high school students with aspirations of becoming entrepreneurs. The city has agreed to fund a $200,000 grant for that program, Dunn said. Nelson and Robinson will not receive any of that money, he said.

Mayor Kenney lauded the program, saying pain from the incident would have resurfaced “over and over again” had litigation unfolded.

“Rather than spending time, money, and resources to engage in a potentially adversarial process, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson approached the city and invited us to partner with them in an attempt to make something positive come of this,” Kenney said in a statement. “This agreement is the result of those conversations, and I look forward to seeing the fruits of this effort in the coming months and years.”

Robinson told the Associated Press, “We thought long and hard about it, and we feel like this is the best way to see that change that we want to see.”

The two men’s Center City attorney, Stewart Cohen, did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment.

The arrests of Nelson and Robinson on April 12 sparked a nationwide outcry, days of protests in Philadelphia, and an apology from the city’s police commissioner. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson called the arrests “reprehensible,” and the coffee chain later announced it would be closing all its U.S. stores on the afternoon of May 29 to conduct training on racial bias.

Nelson and Robinson, 23-year-old entrepreneurs, were sitting in the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce Streets waiting for a business associate when the store manager called police. A video of the arrest went viral.

The Philadelphia Black Men Arrested At Starbucks SPEAKS OUT and The Police Commissioner Apologizes!

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The Philadelphia Black Men Arrested At Starbucks SPEAKS OUT and The Police Commissioner Apologizes!

The Philadelphia Black Men Arrested At Starbucks Said They Were There For 2 Minutes Before 911 Call

“We wasn’t read any rights ― nothing,” said Donte Robinson. “Just double-lock handcuffs behind our backs and escorted out and put into a squad car.”

The two black men arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia last week while waiting for a friend spoke out publicly for the first time Thursday, revealing the store manager called 911 two minutes after they arrived.

Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson walked into the Starbucks on April 12 at approximately 4:35 p.m., they told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Nelson said he immediately asked the store manager if he could use the bathroom, but was told restrooms were for paying customers only.

Nelson said he “left it at that” and joined Robinson at a table to wait for their friend to arrive for their scheduled 4:45 p.m. business meeting. The Starbucks manager then approached the men and asked if they wanted to order something, according to Robinson, and they declined.

At 4:37 p.m., approximately two minutes after they had arrived, the manager called 911.

″They can’t be here for us,” said Robinson, recalling his initial reaction when police officers entered the Starbucks a few minutes later.

“As soon as they approached us, they just said we had to leave,” Nelson said. “There was no question of, you know, ’Was there a problem here between you and the manager? [or] ‘What happened?’”

Police didn’t explain why they were being arrested, Robinson said.

“We wasn’t read any rights ― nothing,” Robinson said. “Just double-lock handcuffs behind our backs and escorted out and put into a squad car.”

Video showing the men’s arrests went viral over the weekend, sparking protests at the store and calls to boycott Starbucks.

“The police were called because these men hadn’t ordered anything,” Melissa DePino, a writer who recorded the incident, tweeted last week. “They were waiting for a friend to show up, who did as they were taken out in handcuffs for doing nothing. All the other white ppl are wondering why it’s never happened to us when we do the same thing.”

The store manager who called 911 has since left the company, according to Starbucks. Company CEO Kevin Johnson has publicly apologized and vowed to “fix” the issue, in part more training for store managers on company guidelines and unconscious bias.

More than 8,000 Starbucks locations will be closed next month so employees can receive racial bias training, the company announced Tuesday. 

Nelson and Robinson spent hours in a jail cell after their arrests, The Associated Press reported. They were released around midnight after the district attorney declined to prosecute them for trespassing.

“You go from being someone who’s just trying to be an entrepreneur, having your own dreams and aspirations, and then this happens,” Nelson told AP. “How do you handle it? Do you stand up? Do you fight? Do you sit down and just watch everyone else fight for you? Do you let it slide, like we let everything else slide with injustice?”

The two men are now involved in mediation with Starbucks, which they hope will lead to lasting change, such as requiring a customer bill of rights to be posted in stores and new policies for customer ejections and racial profiling.

“This is something that has been going on for years and everyone’s blind to it, but they know what’s going on, if you get what I mean” Nelson said. He added that he and Robinson hope to “help people understand that it’s not just a black people thing ― it’s a people thing. That’s what we want to see out of this and that’s true change.”

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross apologized to the two black men arrested for doing nothing other than sitting inside a Starbucks while waiting for an associate to arrive.

“I failed miserably,” he said during a press conference Friday. “I exacerbated the situation with my messaging, it’s as simple as that.”

Ross faced heavy backlash for defending police action used during the confrontation at the Philadelphia Starbucks. He previously said officers did “absolutely nothing wrong” when they approached Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson at the coffee shop over the weekend.

There's been an ARREST in the stabbing of Nicki Minaj's Tour Manager!

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Man Arrested, Charged In Stabbing Death Of Nicki Minaj's Tour Manager!

Charges have been filed in connection with the stabbing death of a member of rapper Nicki Minaj's touring group last week outside an East Mount Airy bar.

31-year-old Pierce Boykin, from the from 1300 block of East Sedgwick Avenue in Philadelphia, was arrested Monday and has been charged with Attempted Murder, Aggravated Assault, Terroristic Threats, Simple Assault, and related offenses in the alleged homicide of 29-year-old De'Von Pickett.

Police say a homicide charge may be added at a later date.Man in custody after stabbing death of Nicki Minaj's tour manager

De'Von Pickett of Brooklyn, New York, who was working as tour manager for Minaj, was in town for rehearsals for her upcoming European tour.

Pickett and 27-year-old Eric Parker of Philadelphia went with a group of friends last Tuesday night to Che Bar and Grill, located in the 6300 block of Stenton Avenue. 

When the bar closed, around 2:30 a.m., Pickett and Parker's group got into a fight with a group of local men on the sidewalk just down the street from the bar.

Police say the altercation was allegedly sparked by a dispute over a woman who worked in the bar.

"Both of the parties both knew a female who worked at the bar, and the arguments centered around her," explained Philadelphia Police Captain James Clark.

Clark says a verbal altercation quickly escalated into a physical confrontation. One of the men pulled out a knife and stabbed both Pickett and Parker multiple times. 

Pickett was killed, and Parker was critically injured. Last week police took a person of interest in for questioning, but later released the man. It is unclear if Boykin was that man.

It is also unclear if police plan to make other arrests.

Last week police said they were searching for two other unnamed persons-of-interest, saying they are known to police.