Police officers were reportedly asked to leave a Tempe Starbucks for making customers feel unsafe, sparking the #DumpStarbucks campaign

Reuters

A Starbucks sign is show on one of the companies stores in Los Angeles, California

• "#DumpStarbucks" started trending on Twitter after news surfaced that a barista at a Tempe, Arizona store reportedly asked police officers to leave because they were making customers feel unsafe. 
• The Tempe Officers Association tweeted that six police officers stopped at a Starbucks on July 4 before their shift and were approached by a barista who said a customer "did not feel safe" because of their presence and asked them to either remove themselves from the customer's line of sight or leave.
• A spokesperson for Starbucks told USA Today that the company was gathering details about the incident and has reached out to the Tempe Police Department and the Tempe Officers Association to apologize and "better understand what happened."
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A Starbucks barista at a store in Tempe, Arizona reportedly asked six police officers to leave or move out of a customer's line of sight because their presence made them feel unsafe, according to a series of tweets on Friday from the Tempe Officers Association.

Now, the hashtag "#DumpStarbucks" is trending on Twitter, after the Tempe Officers Association tweeted a logo seemingly designed in 2012 by the National Organization for Marriage to protest Starbuck's support of same-sex marriage.

The tweets from the Tempe Officers Association allege that a group of six officers, including some veterans, entered a Starbucks at Scottsdale Road and McKellips in Tempe before their July 4 shift and purchased beverages. Then, a barista asked the officers to either remove themselves from a customer's line of sight or leave the store because the customer "did not feel safe" with the officers' presence. 

The officers then reportedly left the establishment. The Tempe Officers Association claims "such treatment has become all too common in 2019" and said it will "look forward to working collaboratively" with Starbucks to address the incident. 

A Starbucks spokesperson told USA Today that the company was gathering details about the incident, and had reached out to the Tempe Police Department and the Tempe Officers Association to apologize and ask for "better understand what happened."

The #DumpStarbucks hashtag on Twitter is primarily full of tweets criticizing the outrage itself, along with people making jokes about the lines at Starbucks being shorter due to police sympathizers boycotting the brand. Some also drew comparisons between an incident last year when two black men were arrested in a Starbucks while waiting for a business meeting after a barista called police.

Others questioned whether conservatives would be hypocritical if they boycotted Starbucks for asking officers to leave while supporting the right of business owners to refuse service to people of their choosing.

Starbucks and the Tempe Officers Association didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.