Zero tolerance policies are frequently applied in the wrong circumstances, but rarely do they reach this level of idiocy.
Last weekend, Alan Goldberg went shopping at IKEA in Takoma Park, Md. and was asked to leave the store because he was carrying a holstered pistol. The catch? Goldberg is the chief of police in Takoma Park and was in uniform during his shopping trip.
It seems that the “Weapons Free Environment” of the store didn’t have an exceptions for police officers that day.
After spending the morning working at a Fourth of July parade, Goldberg had gone to IKEA to shop for furniture with his college-bound daughter. Once at the store, he was told of the store’s zero tolerance gun policy and advised that he could either exit the store or lock his gun in his car. Goldberg says that in his 35-year law enforcement career, he had never been asked to part with his service weapon before.
To a large extent, it is a matter of safety. “It isn’t the most prudent thing to do to walk around the store in uniform with an empty holster,” Goldberg told NBC Washington. “And I am not going to lock my gun in a commercial parking lot, with people watching me put it in there. That’s just ludicrous.”
Though he left the store at the time, Goldberg requested a written statement of the store’s weapon policy, but did not receive it. IKEA released a statement Monday clarifying the “misunderstanding” and specifying “our weapon policy does not apply to law enforcement officers.”
The fact that that needed to be clarified in a written statement is evidence enough of the flaws of zero-tolerance.
