I was in a 7-11 the other day and a police officers was in line ahead of me. I’d like to say he was getting doughnuts but in reality it was a Big Gulp and candy bar. When the time came to pay up, the salesperson did a sort of dismissive hand gesture (very subtle) and mumbled something that I couldn’t hear and the officer left without paying. Is this common?
I’m not sure how I feel about it. Just never seen it before and it does seem slightly creepy.
Very, very common.
Restaurants will discount a meal significantly or give it away for free.
Certainly does raise some ethical issues, some departments expressly forbid the practice, some look the other way, some expressly permit it.
LAPD, for example? Time honored tradition to score a free meal. There are a number of places you can go, same time every day, and see a table full of uniforms.
On the bright side, if the place gets robbed . . .
I believe complimentary coffee is standard practice most places, but I’ve never seen cops get anything else for free.
Until very recently in the UK it was illegal to serve a police officer on duty for precisely this reason.
When I owned a restaurant we would give free coffee or cold drinks to police, mailmen, city workers, and anybody else who’s good favor we wanted. This is called bribery. The effectiveness varies because these people are being offered bribes from others as well, and they may be honest and uninfluenced. Honest or not, its hardly worth showing favoritism in return for these cheap bribes (see the rational game theory thread about that).
I am not sure about my current residence of Central Florida but growing up in NY it was common, and expected, that the cop on the beat wouldn’t pay for food or drink. I actually worked at a dunkin donuts and my job was to prepare four dozen for the evening shift that one of the patrol officers would pick up and bring them back to the station. I will say that every single time they reached for their wallet even though they never were asked to pay. I guess that was part of the dance necessary to get free stuff. I also worked for a pizza place in high school. Uniform police got free slices and/or soda but entire pies ordered would have to be paid for.
In my town, Burger King gives free meals to police officers.
U went with a cop for over 10 years. Every restaurant gave him 20 - 50% off.
I did not. It was only for a few months and, even if the bastard was getting such a discount, every date was dutch treat so I never benefitted from it.
I worked overnight in hotels and we always gave the cops free food and gave them cheap rooms. It is actually a pretty good deal.
I mean food is cheap and if the cops hang around for an hour and eat lunch there, (Well lunch for them it’s 3am), then we don’t hire security. Yes, it’s better to have security but the cops in and out of your hotel lobby is going to at least discourage bad guys.
When I worked at one hotel, I was the overnight manager, I let the cops help themselves to food. I said “Just clean up after yourselves.” We only had one incident with the lobsters, and three cops thinking, we can cook this. They did a good job but the Controller didn’t appreciate lobsters going to cops. She was fine with cheaper food though 
Not a cop, but a municipal worker. In many places where I worked, the policy was “Don’t accept a gift you can’t eat or drink.”
At the pizza place I worked at in high school I was told to waive payment for any police officers, but only after they showed that they expected to pay.
When I worked at a gas station/convenience store in college, we gave free coffee to cops. The reason was simply that we liked having lots of cops around, as it made it less likely we would be robbed.
I’ve actually been impressed with the donut shops and convenience stores that offer free/discounted items to police.
It’s 4AM, and you are working at the quickie-mart. You are the only place around that is open.
How much of a deterent do you think it is to someone considering robbing the till, if they know that there is a good chance a patrol car will pull in at any moment, looking for a refill on their coffee? Costs the store what? Maybe a couple of dollars a night?
In both my 7-11 stint and my time in food service, we happily gave free beverages to on duty officer if they provided their own cups.
When I worked at McDonald’s we would let the volunteer firefighters have their monthly after training meeting in our side room and we gave them any one sandwich each plus all the fries and drinks they wanted. As a general rule, I don’t recall giving out food at other times aside from a few pies here and there.
At my bartending job we would give out one drink to a off duty officer. Of course in our small town with fewer than 20 guys on the force, it was easy to keep track of who worked what shift and you can bet your right arm that when one officer got cheeky and tried to get his drink on duty then his boss heard about it. His firing made the newspaper.
I worked at a sandwich shop in the Chicago area during college. Cops would get free sandwiches, but would pay the $1.00 for a cookie.
Serve them for free, or serve them, period?! 
If the latter – no service to on-duty cops at all – were British cops expected to not eat lunch at all, brown-bag it, eat only in a police-station cafeteria, change out of uniform to eat in a restaurant, or what? :dubious: Except for brown-bagging, none of those seem reasonable options, the first being utterly unrealistic and the latter two unduly taking time away from officer’s patrols.
See, that’s the thing for me. I get that certain businesses would like more police presence. But do all businesses then need to up their giveaways to get the protection they want? Should I leave a plate of cookies on my front porch if I want the deluxe police presence or do I just hope they can fit in a drive-by of my neighborhood when they’ve finished up over at the Pizza Hut?
When I started this thread I was just kind of wondering if it was normal. Now I’m starting to wonder if I need to do more to actually attract the police away from the shopping center.
When I worked at Starbucks we would give cops free stuff soemtimes but we would also do it to regular people too. Some Starbucks will give every cop free coffee. A lot of cops will refuse because it could be considered a bribe. I do not think cops are supposed to accept gifts of any kind although a free cup of coffee might not be a big enough deal for anything to happen.
This one Starbucks got a cop fired because he did not want to pay because he was so used to free coffee that he said “That is the difference between a 5 minute response time and 30”
I’m a fireman/EMT, and there are a few places that will give me a discount on a meal. There is one gas station that is a regular stop after a run to the hospital that comps us with free fountain drinks. Usually, I get water (free to anyone) and will buy something like a bag of Doritos. Others will get the supergulp sized drink, which is pushing it IMAO.
The only place I’m really blatant about this stuff is a chain called Firehouse Subs, because their whole theme is firefighting. If I ever go in wearing a uniform, the meal is free; in civvies and with ID, I get a freebie drink.
ETA: One restaurant we frequented when living in Indianapolis had a sign posted announcing reduced cost meals for cops in uniform.