Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 25, 1993 TAG: 9305250162
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Denny's said it fired the manager of the Maryland restaurant where the complaint occurred. Denny's already faces a lawsuit in California based on similar complaints from 32 black customers.
The incident in Annapolis, Md., occurred April 1 - the same day Denny's settled a separate Justice Department bias complaint in California.
The Secret Service officers said they waited 45 minutes for their breakfasts after placing their orders with a Denny's waitress, and finally left hungry. White Secret Service officers who arrived with them were served by the same waitress within 10 minutes of ordering, the lawsuit says.
"This should not happen to anyone," Officer Robin D. Thompson, one of the six, told a news conference. "It felt as if I was less than the [white] people who I had come with."
The manager was fired for failing to report the officers' complaint to company headquarters, said Coleman Sullivan, a vice president of Spartanburg, S.C.-based TW Services, which owns Denny's.
The company's initial investigation found evidence of "slow service and not racial bias," Sullivan said in a statement. But he said TW Services will seek an independent investigation, possibly by "a respected civil rights organization."
Justice Department officials said they have asked the company for an explanation of the Annapolis incident, because it appears "to violate the letter and spirit of the understanding" between the company and the department in the California case.
In the Annapolis case, the six black men were part of a group of 21 Secret Service officers who stopped for breakfast on their way to the Naval Academy before a speech by President Clinton.
The entire group, all wearing black uniforms, badges and guns, entered the Denny's together and were seated about 7:30 a.m. at several different tables in the same section, the lawsuit said.
The black officers, seated at one table, still had not been served when the entire group began to leave about 8:25 a.m.
by CNB