In an open letter posted on social media, Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop termination of his contract with the Austin Police Department following the Black Lives Matter protests.
The Austin, Texas-based motorcycle workshop, founded through Lance Armstrong, took the decision after “The Austin Community Police Assessment” and waived a contract with the City of Austin two years before its intended conclusion.
According to Kxan’s reports, the three-year contract was originally drafted in 2019 and is worth $314,000, so the company required obtaining and repairing bicycles for the Austin Police Department over an initial three-year period, with extension options.
“In the context of the existing assessment of network surveillance in Austin, we have made the decision to avoid the purchase, resale and maintenance of Trek motorcycles and accessories issued through the police as part of a request for proposals from the city of Austin, whose store had in the past been assigned,” said the online post.
“It’s hard in those days to balance the desires of a company and a network,” he says. “Our entire workers’ organization has been involved in this discussion and we have immersed ourselves deeply in our network to see how we can improve our component for the protection of our consumers and that this city is moving in the right direction.
“Companies can no longer be non-participants in the communities they serve. We’ve selected what we’ll do to the fullest to underestimate those divisions and put our network in the right aspect of the story. We had to make those choices possible earlier when we felt the corporations whose products we sell put young schoolchildren at risk of violence. “
This is not the first time Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop has cut ties due to ethical conflict. In 2018, corporate cycling brands left through Vista Outdoors, the parent company of cycling brands, due to their links to gun production and shooting sports.
Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop is also not the first company to break ties with police after the Black Lives Matter protests. After the online publication of photographs of police officers using bicycles as weapons as opposed to protesters, Fuji promptly suspended sales before Trek issued a complaint. the use of their motorcycles by the police as “abhorrent and very oblivious to the intended use” and proclaiming their “commitment to a better future”.
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