Web Feature: Serving Coffee and Memorializing Four Fallen Officers

On the morning of Nov. 29, Brad Carpenter’s café became a center of tragedy. A gunman walked into Forza Coffee in Parkland, Wash., and opened fire on four police officers from nearby Lakewood who were sitting around laptops, sipping coffee and chatting. All four were killed, but not before wounding the attacker, later identified by police as Maurice Clemmons, and driving him from the store. (Clemmons was shot and killed by Seattle police on Dec. 1). Carpenter re-opened the Parkland location—one of 22 in the Forza chain—on Dec. 12 at 8:14 a.m., the time the violence had erupted two weeks earlier.

Q: What was the re-opening of the café like from your perspective?
A: I got there about 6:30, and there were already about 100 people lined up outside. We opened up at 8:14 in the morning, and the Lakewood chief of police was the first customer. The baristas who were actually involved in this asked if they could be the ones to serve him. There were a lot of powerful emotions going on with that. The chief was the first one, and he had roughly 40 of his officers behind him. Before we even opened the door, we had them in the shop. Then we opened the door and there must have been another 250 to 300 people outside, and of them at least a third of them were police officers from across the state, and some from as far away as California. It was pretty powerful to see these guys standing in line.

Q: You’re a retired police officer; did that make the shooting hit even closer to home with you?
A: I don’t think it hit me more than anyone else. Everybody is tired of the violence and is just saying no more. I think that’s why we had so many people stand up and send out their prayers and such. I think it hit everybody pretty hard.

Q: Did you consider not re-opening the Parkland location?
A: Right after the shooting, prosecutors had to remove sections of the walls and all the furniture in case they had to prepare for trial. It needed about a week to be rebuilt. When we rebuilt it, the families and the police officers wanted to come into the store. We had it closed, and they came in and told us overwhelmingly they wanted the store to re-open. It just came down to the fact that it’s a commercial building, and if we didn’t re-open the store the landlord would have found somebody else to re-open it. Then all this would have been swept under the carpet. We felt we needed to be the ones to memorialize this incident and honor these guys.

Q: It must have been emotional having the families and colleagues of those officers in the store just days after the incident.
A: The most powerful moment for me was an exchange between a customer who was inside the store during the shooting and one of the officer’s wives. The customer was crying, and she was consoling him as he explained how her husband saved his wife’s life because the officer basically threw his body in front of the older woman and took several shots before he tackled the suspect and knocked him out of the store. So when the officer’s wife turned to me and said, “You gotta open the store,” I couldn’t do anything but say, “Yes ma’am, and I hope we do it right for you.”

Q: Throughout December Forza had a donation system in place in its cafés and on its Web site so that customers could contribute to an education trust fund for the nine children who lost parents in the shooting. What was the response like?
A: Right now [the last week of December], we’re roughly at $96,000 collected. Originally I wanted $90,000 and now we’re past that, so I’ve been hoping for $100,000. Everyone was just like, “Wow, what can I do?” Obviously, the community has responded.

Q: At the time of the shooting, you had two baristas in the shop. What was it like seeing them when you got over to the shop?
A: There were a lot of tears and hugging, but a lot of pride too. Those baristas just did such an extreme job. They were able to get a complete description of the gentleman and then went around after he fled. They actually saw him a block away getting into a truck and they gave all that information to the police. The police found the truck within an hour and were able to positively ID the guy in an hour and a half. The baristas were just studs with that. I couldn’t believe how well they did.

Q: As a company, how are you trying to move forward?
A: We don’t try to understand; we don’t try to ask why. We just look at the positives that can come out of this, and then we try to move on.

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