The NYPD has cleared employees of a Manhattan Shake Shake of intentionally serving officers milkshakes with a splash of bleach after three cops fell ill Monday night. In a tweet early Tuesday, NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison wrote that a “thorough investigation” showed “no criminality” by restaurant employees.
The fast-moving story began around 9:30 Monday night, when three officers tasted something strange in milkshakes they bought from a Lower Manhattan Shake Shack. After feeling sick, they were taken to Bellevue Hospital and police unions immediately labeled the attack intentional.
By 10:45, the Detectives’ Endowment Association, a labor union for NYPD detectives, put out a statement claiming that “three of our brothers in blue were intentionally poisoned.” Police everywhere, the statement said, are “under attack by vicious criminals who dislike us simply because of the uniform we wear.”
And sometimes, it turns out, they’re not. The incident Monday night was not an intentional attack on three unsuspecting officers, but the result of a milkshake machine that was partially cleaned and put back into service before the cleaning product was completely rinsed out, the Daily News reports. Turns out it’s not police officers in particular who need to be worried about Shake Shack milkshakes, it’s everyone.
