If you've ever wondered what that special, ummmmm, flavor is in Taco Bell "food", this article may clear up the mystery:
May 23, 2001
Tampering Has Caused Police
To Become Leery of Fast Food
By JENNIFER ORDONEZ
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Hours into a long Sunday shift, Chris T. Phillips, a North Carolina highway patrolman, was looking forward to his order of Taco Bell nachos. Pulling away from the drive-through window, he shoveled into his mouth a mound of meat and cheese. Then, he noticed something.
"It was clear and slimy in appearance," Sgt. Phillips recalls.
Dangling from a chip, state lab tests later confirmed, was phlegm. Sgt. Phillips said that an employee who was fired after the incident had complained of being harassed by police about his skateboarding. Amy Sherwood, spokesman for Tricon Global Restaurants, which owns Taco Bell, declines to comment other than to say the company "has the highest admiration and respect for the work of police officers," who are always welcome to eat at its restaurants.
Now, nearly four years later, it is hard for Sgt. Phillips to stomach fast food. "You realize that people will do that to you, and eating is just never the same."
The docket of food-tampering cases with police as victims is growing, and many officers say that they think twice about ordering fast food while in uniform. Some blame the teenagers fast-food places hire to do jobs that don't pay well and are hard to fill. Others cite antipolice sentiment in the general public. "It's consistent with the erosion of respect for authority figures," says Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police.
Even the most vigilant restaurant managers can't watch their kitchen help all the time. And in the billions of fast-food meals dished out every year without incident, spit is hard to spot.
Some police officers bring their own lunches or go to cafeterias, where the food is served up in plain sight. The Oro Valley, Ariz., Police Department distributes occasional memos warning officers about food places in the vicinity where food contamination might be more likely to occur because they employ people known to have been arrested or to have been suspects in criminal cases. "I just say, 'Listen, be careful, we've seen a lot of people working [at that restaurant] that we've dealt with,' " says Detective Herb Williams.
Contamination isn't limited to spit. The meat patty that an employee at a Burger King restaurant gave to a sheriff's deputy in Rochester, N.Y., last year allegedly was tainted with urine and oven cleaner. The man's lawyer, Robert Brenna Jr., says he became "violently ill."
So, the alleged victim, Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy Gamaliel Dominguez and his wife last month filed a $13.5 million civil lawsuit against Burger King, its franchisee and two of its employees. Criminal charges were filed against two workers Burger King fired in response to the allegation. One, Daniel P. Musson, then 18, pleaded guilty to tampering with consumer products and will be sentenced next month. The other, Scott B. Savino, then 20, was indicted on two counts of assault and two counts of tampering. He goes to trial May 29, and if convicted on all counts could be sentenced to seven years in state prison.
Burger King, a unit of Diageo PLC, said it hadn't been notified of the suit and declined to comment further.
In January, a police officer got a breakfast Taquito spiked with marijuana from a Dallas-area Whataburger restaurant. Corpus Christi, Tex.-based Whataburger says it fired the employee charged with the crime and is cooperating fully in prosecuting him. "Action was swift," said a spokesman.
In Beaver Dam, Wis., a police sergeant whose mouth started burning as he ate a chalupa from Taco Bell had it analyzed and was told that it was laced with a sink sanitizer, according to the criminal complaint filed in the case. A spokesperson in Louisville, Ky., for Tricon says the company cannot specifically comment on any of the Taco Bell cases.
'Foreign Objects'
James Yonkie, a 21-year-old fast-food veteran, and a co-worker were charged in Dodge County, Wis., circuit court last year for allegedly contaminating the chalupa with sink cleaner. In March, Mr. Yonkie pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct. In addition to the 40 hours of community service he must serve as a condition of his court agreement, Mr. Yonkie must tell all future fast-food employers about the incident. As a condition of his plea agreement, he must testify in the pending criminal trial of Keith Williamson, his former best friend and Taco Bell co-worker. Mr. Williamson is charged with "placing foreign objects in an edible."
In an interview, Mr. Yonkie, who maintains his innocence, says he despises such acts. Nonetheless, he concedes he understands how a patrol car in the drive-through lane might induce mischief among some fast-food workers with a distaste for authority. "It's like, 'Oh, yeah, you think you're so big? Well, then I'm going to show you,' " Mr. Yonkie says, adding that for those in the fast-food industry, such people "give us all a bad name."
In some states, officers who find somebody else's saliva in their food have been surprised to learn that it isn't always a crime. Even after state lab tests confirmed the presence of spit on Officer Phillips's nachos, there were no charges because no criminal statute in North Carolina prohibits spitting on food.
But in Ohio, a 15-year-old former McDonald's drive-through-window clerk now faces delinquency charges of contaminating a substance for human consumption because he allegedly spit in a police officer's soft drink in February. It's a felony if he is found to carry a communicable disease that he knew about, a misdemeanor if he doesn't. His case is scheduled for a juvenile-court hearing on Friday in Franklin County, Ohio. The officer became aware of the problem only after he had consumed the drink and noticed a slimy residue on the cup. McDonald's Corp. says it doesn't tolerate such antics. The teenager was fired immediately.
Police officers, who often eat free of charge at fast-food restaurants, are especially valued customers because they lend a sense of security to an industry that keeps late hours and lots of cash on hand. "I want them in my restaurants to help keep them safe. It's critical," says David Bear, a McDonald's franchisee in the suburbs of Chicago.
After pulling away from a Checkers restaurant, Jeff Bousquet, a Pasco County, Fla., school resource officer, noticed a suspicious hand-drawn pig and the words "oink, oink" on his bag of food. Checking his burger, he thought he found spit and notified the company. The burger was never tested; Checkers denies the allegation of food tampering and says it has videotape of the food being prepared as well as the creation of the artwork. The 17-year-old boy, a student at the high school Officer Bousquet patrolled, was fired. Checkers apologized to the officer and offered him a small, undisclosed monetary settlement, which he accepted.
Perpetrators often give themselves away. It was the Burger King worker's behavior that tipped off Indiana State Trooper Dan Jones. " 'Enjoy' was all he said," recalls Officer Jones. "He had a real stupid grin on his face, like a deviant kind of grin that said 'I just spit on your sandwich.' "
So Trooper Jones checked. Beneath the bun of his chicken club sandwich was a pool of spit approximately an inch in diameter, he said. He promptly informed all employees in the restaurant that they were under investigation for consumer-product tampering. He sent the burger to a state lab for DNA testing, and a judge issued a court warrant to take blood samples from three kitchen employees who worked that night.
Very Sorry
As it turned out, the saliva belonged to a 16-year-old grill cook who was fired and sentenced to 40 hours of community service. Trooper Jones eventually got a written apology from the boy.
Meanwhile, Trooper Jones's superior, Lt. J.C. Linegar, sent an e-mail alerting other police in the area about the incident. In turn, the restaurant owner, Midwest Food Co., filed a legal notice with the state alleging that the Indiana State police "slandered the reputation" of the company because the lab test had yet to be completed and that its franchisee had suffered an extensive loss of business. The company now has no plans to file suit. Burger King says it urged the franchisee not to take legal action. "There was a breakdown somewhere in our process," says Kim Miller, a Burger King spokeswoman. "It's a very damaging mark to our brand."
In Oro Valley, two former Burger King employees served 30 days in jail after pleading guilty to aggravated assault for spitting on a burger served to a police officer. Test results later found that both individuals had been exposed to hepatitis, says Detective Williams, who investigated the case. Burger King says it has no record of the incident.
Although the officer "got sick to his stomach," he has not contracted hepatitis, Detective Williams says.
Write to Jennifer Ordonez at jennifer.ordonez@wsj.com |
