Jersey City Waiter Fired After Wearing 'Dead Cop' T-Shirt

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the commanding officer of the Jersey City Police Department's East District. Patch regrets the error.

JERSEY CITY, NJ — A Jersey City restaurant fired a server for violating its uniform policy after the employee wore a T-shirt to work Wednesday that read: "I hate every cop in this town. A good cop is a dead cop."

The restaurant, Gringo's Tacos, opened about two years ago on Coles Street in downtown Jersey City. The server was fired because he repeatedly violated the business' written uniform policy, which states servers must wear denim shirts to work, according to co-owner Rebecca Tarantino.

Instead, the server wore a T-shirt made famous by punk rocker Nick Cave. (Here is a link to a photo of the shirt he wore.) It was the same day when three plainclothes Jersey City police officers walked into the restaurant as it was opening for lunch; they eat lunch there frequently, the restaurant says. They saw the shirt and walked out, Tarantino said.

Wednesday morning's incident was the most recent instance of that particular server violating the policy, said Richard Truocchio, one of Gringo's four owners and a chef there.

"I should have noticed his shirt this morning as we were setting up, shame on me for not noticing it," Tarantino said. "Those are not our political views. We serve police, fire and first-responders. They are part of the fabric of the community, and we respect them."

"This is so totally not what we think," Truocchio said. "Three out of our four owners have family members in law enforcement. He has freedom of speech, but I personally was very offended by the shirt."

The server worked at Gringo's since it opened and is a very nice guy, Tarantino said.

"The server felt horrible; he said those are not his views either," she said. "He just grabbed an old T-shirt. It's a punk T-shirt, and he was crying about it. He just felt awful and kept apologizing. He didn't mean to cause trouble for us."

Officer Carmine Disbrow, president of the Jersey City Police Officers Benevolent Association, did not respond to requests for comment via phone and email. A Jersey City spokesperson did not provide a comment.

Gringo's issued a statement Wednesday afternoon about what happened. In it, they publicly apologized and offered any first-responder a free meal that day.

Truocchio said the restaurant's owners met with the commanding officer of the department's East District, the district Gringo's is located in, as well as detectives, and talked to the police officers benevolent association. He apologized for the T-shirt and the police said they understood and the matter has been resolved.

Truocchio also said Gringo's has received more Facebook "likes" and positive rankings from police officers in the past two days than it has in the two years since it opened.

With reporting by Carly Baldwin, Patch staff

Email: daniel.hubbard@patch.com