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Mellow Johnny's cancels APD purchasing contract due to left hourly employees complaints


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just wow, fired up Facebook this morning when I got onto the computer for work and saw this. How stupid can people (and apparently business owners) be?

 
quoted from screenshot - 
 
"For the past eight years I have had then fortune of buying and purchase equipment for the Down Town Area Command (DTAC) Bike Patrol and our Bicycle Public Order Team. We have 158 bike officers in DTAC and have been purchasing our bikes from Mellow Johnny’s Bike store in downtown Austin, a local business.
 
Today I received a call the sales manager I have worked with for years at MJ’S, he informed me that they have three employees who work for them that are complaining about providing bikes to the police department in this time of social unrest in protest and disturbances. They stated to ownership that they did not like the fact that we use bicycles to help us manage crowds and crowd movement.
 
The ownership of MJ’S has decided to listen to three employees and is sending APD an email canceling the four years left on the contract because three employees do not like police officers and did not like us in the store.
 
I am not going to put the dollar amount out there of the contract but we at APD we’re a great customer and bought 50 TREK police bikes a year from them, you can do the math on the bike at TREK.com but you will be short of the actuate dollar amount because of add ons.
 
So now a owner of a business choose to use loose one of his biggest contracts and listens to three hourly employees, they were not management. The employees I always talked too at MJ’S were great and we never had a problem so I don’t know why MJ’S choose this path to go down.
 
If anyone knows of a bike store that would like to serve the police I would love to talk to them about doing our next APD contract."
 
 

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14 minutes ago, mack_turtle said:

Good for MJs. They are an independent business who can make principaled decisions not to sell equipment that will be abused to a corrupt agency with a bloated budget.

I thought Trek stopped selling those cops bikes anyway.

Furthermore, fuck APD.

lol I wonder who they will call once one of these tent-castle bums or someone else breaks into their shop and jacks a bunch of bikes. 

 

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Yeah I saw this also this morning.  Couldn't believe they would be so short sighted.  Hopefully there is a penalty for breaking the contract.

 

Won't effect me much, as I think I have only been in that store 2-3 times, and a couple of those times was for Rattler pick up. Now there really is no reason to go there.

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as someone who has worked in a bike shop that serviced bikes for the local PD, I can tell you this was not an easy decision. the bikes came in every few months with cracked frames, broken axles, bent seat posts, totally destroyed suspension, bald tires. each job was hundreds of dollars of taxpayer money. when I met some of those officers, it was clear that the individual riding the bike was challenging the manufacturer's weight limit for the bicycle. we had one who cracked the seat tube and bent the seat post at the same time, just pedaling around city street. the bikes often looked like one of Seth's bikes after a week of Angelfire, but just from  basically riding sidewalks. I know those bikes get ridden a lot, but there was often clear evidence of abuse of equipment. the bike shop happily accepted the money though because it was good for business.

APD's budget is ridiculous. I am surprised they can afford to pay MJs prices for bikes and service, but guess who really pays that bill.

Edited by mack_turtle
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Just now, mack_turtle said:

as someone who has worked in a bike shop that serviced bikes for the local PD, I can tell you this was not an easy decision. the bikes came in every few months with cracked frames, broken axles, bent seat posts, totally destroyed suspension, bald tires. each job was hundreds of dollars of taxpayer money. when I met some of those officers, it was clear that the individual riding the. bike was challenging the manufacturer's weight limit for the bicycle. we had one who cracked the set tube and bend the seat post at the same time, just pedaling around city street. the bikes often looked like one of Seth's bikes after a week of Angelfire, but just from  basically riding sidewalks. I know those bikes get ridden a lot, but there was often clear evidence of abuse of equipment. the bike shop happily accepted the money though because it was good for business.

APD's budget is ridiculous. I am surprised they can afford to pay MJs prices for bikes and service, but guess who really pays that bill.

ok, this post was even better!

 

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Businesses should be able to reserve the right to refuse service for whatever reason they see fit. It's their business. If they don't want to sell bikes to APD, they shouldn't. Just like if someone didn't wanna bake a cake for someone, they shouldn't. If profit drops off, they'll have to live with it. If I get refused service somewhere, I'll gladly take my money elsewhere. Just my 2 cents.

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Not trying to stir shit here but is the assumption being made that APD would have responded faster to a break in at MJs than they would to one at BSS or Peddlers? Are we now saying that not supporting the PD is better than supporting and then withdrawing that support?


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3 minutes ago, Tree Magnet said:

Not trying to stir shit here but is the assumption being made that APD would have responded faster to a break in at MJs than they would to one at BSS or Peddlers? Are we now saying that not supporting the PD is better than supporting and then withdrawing that support?
 

I would hope that's not the case.

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I don't think anybody is mad at the police for WHAT they are doing, it's the how and why that are causing the issues.

And the selective enforcement that Seth mentions is part of a much bigger problem that I think most people would want to fix if they looked at the big picture.

Edited by Big_papa_nuts
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23 minutes ago, Tree Magnet said:

Not trying to stir shit here but is the assumption being made that APD would have responded faster to a break in at MJs than they would to one at BSS or Peddlers? Are we now saying that not supporting the PD is better than supporting and then withdrawing that support?


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their online rating has gone from a high 4 to a 1.8 since they made this decision. the people have spoken. LOL

 

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2 minutes ago, Seths Pool said:

their online rating has gone from a high 4 to a 1.8 since they made this decision. the people have spoken. LOL

 

I don't know if you want to bring up public approval rating during a conversation about the police these days. 

Also, anyone can leave a Google review not just paying customers. MJ's could double their profits because of this and we would never know. They will also likely go through the proper channels to have non-relevant reviews removed.

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so a bunch fo bootlickers who have never shopped at MJs suddenly got online and wrote nasty reviews of it to drag them down for not kowtowing to the APD mafia? 

edit: yup. look at the last few reviews on Yelp. the APD cult of bootlickers are out in full force posting "pro-cop" propaganda. their rating is still 3.5. I don't have an opinion about MJ's because I've never had a need to shop there, but a spike in fake reviews from people who have never shopped there is not an honest way to make a point.

Edited by mack_turtle
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2 minutes ago, mack_turtle said:

so a bunch fo bootlickers who have never shopped at MJs suddenly got online and wrote nasty reviews of it to drag them down for not kowtowing to the police? 

No, I believe that people are upset with Mellow Johnny's ownership for kowtowing to a handful of kneejerk ninny employees. It's hard for me to believe though. It's such a strange line in the sand for them to draw.

Has anyone verified that any of this is true? I know I'm reading about it on the internet, so I KNOW it's true, but it would be interesting to see if this is really happening.

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Of all the bloated budget that APD has, I don’t see this as the most impactful place to want to cut or “defund” them. I thought we liked bikes here.

Let’s look elsewhere in the budget…like maybe…armored military vehicles and UAVs?

The term is “defund” not “un-fund” the police. Just because something is affiliated with APD, that doesn’t mean we need to throw it out.


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