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Some cop in Tulsa didn’t want to eat at Redrock Canyon Grill…

11:11 AM EDT on September 15, 2015

redrock grill

I generally don't like restaurant chains, but one that gets the TLO Seal of Approval is Hal Smith's Redrock Canyon Grill. The service is always great and everything on the menu is delicious, especially those sweet glazed carrots. I don't know what's in the glaze, but it's probably a combination of brown sugar and crack cocaine.

My only complaint about the restaurant is the name. Everyone calls it something different. For example, I call it Red Rock Grill, while my mom calls it Red Canyon Grill and my dad calls it "That one restaurant by the lake. What's it called?"

I bring up Red Rock Grill because a Mounds Police Officer (apparently it's a small town near Tulsa) voluntarily left the restaurant over the weekend before he could order a meal. He did this because some dopey restaurant manager-in-training was apparently confused by the cop's Best Buy-esque police uniform, and as a result, asked the cop to conceal his firearm.

KJRH.com has all the details:

A south Tulsa restaurant is having to issue a public apology for how they treated a police officer who came to their establishment.

The owners of Red Canyon Grill say they’re sorry for the way a situation involving a Mounds police officer was handled. Restaurant workers informed police officer Brian Radford that he could not openly carry his gun while dining.

Red Canyon Grill?! See what I mean? Even the news can't get the name of the restaurant straight! Hal Smith should just change the name to "Kind of like Charleston's, but better."

Let's go to a news organization that can get the name right. The Tulsa World:

A Tulsa restaurant said it has apologized for refusing to serve a Mounds police officer who was openly carrying a gun.

“We were unable to identify the gentleman as a law enforcement official, as a police officer,” Jeremy Brim, an area partner with Redrock Canyon Grill and the Hal Smith Restaurant Group, said Monday in a telephone interview. “The weapon was brought to our attention, and we asked him to conceal just like we would anybody else carrying an open-carry in our building.

“Unfortunately, the mistake we made was not being able to identify him as a police officer because obviously that is certainly part of their uniform.”

Mounds Police Officer Brian Radford wrote in a Facebook post that a Redrock employee acknowledged that he was a police officer but that he was denied service because he was wearing a gun.

Brim said staff called Radford to apologize minutes after the episode.

Brim said the officer was wearing a gray polo shirt — which Brim believes “had a small badge sewn on it” — and dark pants, which “apparently is a casual version of their uniform. We just didn’t identify him as a police officer and that was our mistake.”

So let me get this straight. Instead of complying and / or explaining to the manager that he was in his police uniform and everything was okay, the cop voluntarily left the restaurant and then whined and complained about his experience on Facebook, because as we all know, nothing is more American than complaining about a bad restaurant experience on Social Media.

Here is Radford's Facebook post:

brian radford facebook

Can anybody get this name straight! It's Redrock Canyon Grill. Not RED ROCK CANYON. Then again, based on some of the other typos and grammar issues in his post we should be happy Officer Radford got that close. (Editor's Note: TLO Typo Disclaimer rule in effect.)

Anyway, since I never plan on visiting Mounds, I'm just going to say it: I think the cop was looking for attention, a lifetime supply of free food from Red Canyon Grill, or he had to go to the bathroom really bad and didn't want to go at the restaurant. It had to be one of the three, because why else would you leave and make a scene like that? You're at Red Rock Grill! He should have asked for a different manager, explained that he was in uniform and then enjoyed some of those sweet glazed carrots. I'd conceal my gun for them. They're that good.

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