{"id":28520,"date":"2025-10-31T20:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T20:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/28520\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T20:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T20:38:09","slug":"florida-man-arrested-after-tearing-down-pride-flag-in-starbucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/28520\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida man arrested after tearing down Pride flag in Starbucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Tucker Alden Kemp was arrested over his anti-LGBTQ+ tirade. (Pinellas County Jail)<\/p>\n

A Florida man has reportedly been arrested after violently ripping down a Pride flag in a local Starbucks, demanding the staff display the American flag instead.<\/p>\n

31-year-old Tucker Alden Kemp reportedly went on a major anti-LGBTQ+ tirade inside a branch of the international coffee shop in St Petersburg, Florida.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to an arrest affidavit, Kemp entered the shop and told the manager the flag was offensive and should be replaced with the Star Spangled Banner.<\/p>\n

After being told it is store policy to display the Pride flag, Kemp allegedly threw tea on the flag, ripped it off the wall, and threw it in a nearby rubbish bin.<\/p>\n

\"TheTucker Alden Kemp was arrested at the Starbucks in Florida. (not pictured) (Getty)<\/p>\n

He was then arrested and taken to the Pinellas County Jail where he was kept for six hours before being released on a $500 bond. Police have charged him with criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.<\/p>\n

The incident cost the Starbucks branch at least $210 worth of damage to the wall and the flag, according to local outlet FOX13.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Smoking Gun reports that Kemp, the father of a young girl, is a registered Republican and works as a sales manager at a funeral home chain.<\/p>\n

Anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes involving vandalism or destruction\/damage of property are increasingly prevelant in the US, according to statistics from the FBI.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, there have been at least 160 reported criminal acts of vandalism motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ views, making it the most common offence type ahead of assault, of which there have been 154 reported incidents.<\/p>\n

Florida has become a centre-point for anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, in large part due to Republican governor Ron DeSantis\u2019 continually homophobic political actions.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s Department of Transportation (FDOT) has, over the past few months, removed several rainbow crosswalks<\/a> in Miami Beach,<\/a> Fort Lauderdale, Boynton Beach, and Key West, over what it called \u201csocial, political, or ideological messages.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a rainbow crosswalk dedicated to the victims of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting was removed<\/a> by state officials, activists in the area came together to colour it back in using chalk.<\/p>\n

Activist and survivor of the shooting, Brandon Wolf, branded the government\u2019s actions as \u201ccowardly,\u201d adding in a post on X\/Twitter: \u201cA memorial to my dead brothers isn\u2019t political. But your cowardly, dead-of-night erasure of it sure is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucker Alden Kemp was arrested over his anti-LGBTQ+ tirade. (Pinellas County Jail) A Florida man has reportedly been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[21132,157,202,204,203,199,201,200,21133,628],"class_list":{"0":"post-28520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-gay","9":"tag-pride","10":"tag-st-pete","11":"tag-st-pete-headlines","12":"tag-st-pete-news","13":"tag-st-petersburg","14":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","15":"tag-st-petersburg-news","16":"tag-starbucks","17":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}