I fit the description…
artandeverythingafter.com
artandeverythingafter.com
"...they didn’t believe that I wasn’t a criminal. They had to find out. My word was not enough for them. My ID was not enough for them."
Well ... no. If you are indeed close to the given description of a criminal complaint, they're going to check. The have to check. If they'd come across the actual criminal and he'd behaved similarly (and lying by producing plausible ID, acceptable home address, etc) and then let the actual criminal go, that'd be terrible.
Now, the situation could indeed have been improved by the cops: the 'suspect' made no threatening moves, NO need to reach for a gun; simply act like a reasonable human being having a conversation; call for another officer with the same (similar?) ethnicity...
In my opinion, not only is it made to intimidate, but also puts his life in danger. What if he reached for his wallet without warning the police (something I could easily see myself doing)? He may very well catch a bullet before the officer realizes what he's really trying to do.
No, I do not believe that the police are picking everyone "close to the given description of a criminal complaint". Perhaps they were trying to pick up everyone close to the description in _this_ criminal complaint.
IMHO, this is simply an excuse to pursue racial profiling. In this story, the police readily admitted that he didn't match the description (he was heavier) but they didn't really notice until after the fact and this didn't prompt them to let him go. Then what was the point of detaining him? Clearly for show, everyone in the area was reminded of how active the police were. Again, in my opinion, I suspect that the way people felt about said activity would likely break along racial lines.
[0]: http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/a...
You can't have it both ways. If they know the description they have from an eyewitness is weak, then they have to dig deeper to make sure they're not releasing the actual suspect. In this case, he never mentioned whether the eyewitness actually came along and said it wasn't him. All we know is that we was not arrested and no longer detained. We don't know why.
Would that ever happen? Very rarely. Would the officer stopping a white guy who fitted a 1/5 description grab for his gun? Of course not.
Because the description of the suspect is "black, average size, and wears a knit cap." Indeed the description could have been more complete. Whomever interviewed the victim might have botched it. Maybe the woman was completely wrong. Maybe the communication for a BOLO was still incomplete.
But that's the description they had and that's the description they went on. These cops could have been less intimidating, but with the information they had, they still had to check this guy out.
Its not just incomplete - he literally does not fit the description.
I would not so easily let the officers off the hook. The worst case is that this happens so often, they don't even see it for what it is.
Descriptions are frequently sketchy like this. You hear them on the news daily. "Middle-aged white male wearing jeans and a ball cap". If that's all you have and don't act on it immediately at the time and location, its usefulness evaporates.
There is a time and place factor here together with a description; they are not randomly stopping someone in a random location at a random time just for looking black.
It happened to me a few years ago. A guy had just robbed a 7-11 and I was walking home from work. The cop stopped me, cuffed me, put me in his car, drove me back to the crime scene and had the witness make sure it wasn't me. I'm a fat, short white guy, btw.
Stopping people who fit the description of somebody who just committed a crime is the system working. No wonder both sides are agitated. The cops get slammed if they do their job and if they don't. No matter what the cops do, certain citizens will say it either is too much or not enough.
Seriously, the only thing I get out of these conversations these days is nobody here should be taken seriously about anything serious.
1) he's making a display of readiness, and 2) he does not consider the detainee an immediate threat to grab for his gun.
He literally doesnt fit the description.
If she isnt, then the black and knit cap part are just as suspect as the puffy coat part; and the cops cant stop anyone because they have no description - and so the cops stopped someone not matching the description
If she is, then puffy coat is just as important as black or knit cap, and the cops cant stop anyone who doesnt match all the criteria - and so the cops stopped someone not matching the description.
No, no they don't. Goodness.
Let me break down this problem for you. Maybe a quarter of Boston is black, half of those are men, the height/weight thing probably doesn't rule out more than half the people (and the police clearly admit in this interaction that it's a stretch to say he's that light-weight). At least 10% of men will go out with a knit cap on a cold Boston day. You multiply those together and you get 0.00625. You, and the police officers, together are thinking, "man, that's a surprisingly low probability, only an 0.625% chance that we'd come across a guy matching that description! We'd better detain him!"
But that's a dangerous fallacy, in a family called the false positive paradoxes. Usually we surprise kids in statistics class with these by saying, "hey, you live in New York and took a 99%-accurate test for HIV and it came out positive, what's the chance that you actually have HIV?" And they answer 99%. But the real answer is, you probably don't have it, and the probability is closer to one in three. How can this be? Well, you can look up these statistics for 2012, where there are 130,000 cases of HIV/AIDS in New York, which has nearly 20 million people, so your prior probability of having an HIV infection is only something like 0.65%; then the 1% false positive rate means that your 99%-accurate test has only increased your probability of actually having an HIV infection to about 39%, as the false positive set is larger than the true positive set.
It's even worse in this case, where you're looking for one person. Your 0.625% chance is spread out over a city of 650,000, meaning that over 4,000 people are subsumed by this description. Given all of the facts cited there is a less-than-0.025% chance that the guy they are detaining has done anything wrong.
Imagine the absurdity if they actually worked out and then quoted the statistics: "Look, we're 99.98% sure that you're not the guy we're looking for, but we're detaining you anyway, because we demand six nines of certainty that you're not who we're looking for. Oh, you have a valid photo ID and we can easily check that someone with that name is a professor at this college? Roots in the community? Well, that only bumps you up to about 99.999% sure that you're not the person we're looking for, but that's only five nines, buddy, not enough for us to let you go about your business. We've got to get the woman who made a complaint to look at your face to make absolutely sure that you're not the criminal who we think you might with 0.001% chance be."
They absolutely do not have to check that. Certainly they don't have to stop you to check that -- at five nines surely they can let you go about your business and check up with you at your residence if they receive sudden incriminating information.
No it wouldn't. This happens all the time to white people. I had a friend who had numerous warrants and was let go by the police numerous times because he used his brother's name. The author is saying they only did this because he was black and I don't doubt that one bit.
Can someone point me to what exactly did police officers do wrong in this story?
> Barbara Sullivan made a knit cap for me. She knitted it in pinks and browns and blues and oranges and lime green. No one has a hat like this.
Yeah, dude — I'm looking at your photo right now and it definitely looks like a generic knit cap. It's completely reasonable that when someone hears a detail "knit cap" and then sees you, it clicks.
> If you are wondering why people don’t go with the police, I hope this explains it for you.
No. It doesn't, at all. Nothing in behaviour of this police officers even hinted of a wrong attitude. The "white woman" wouldn't "decide" if you're a criminal or not: she would give testimony. This attitude of "resisting arrest" would seem paranoid on it's own; it seems even more paranoid and insane in context of this story.
By the way, did any officer actually tell him that a victim was white? Or is it just what he automatically thought?
If I would go through something like that, I would be glad that police is doing it's job.
This sounds like a perfectly fine interaction to me in this case, and like most other cases that you never hear about every single day.
That means one of two things – 1)The Author is completely off base or 2)You don't understand why it's legitimate for the author to feel that it wasn't an okay interaction. (Or, I guess, 3 - Some middle ground between the two)
It's easy to say the other side is just wrong when you don't agree with it. It's more of a challenge to say they're not completely off base and that we don't understand their experience, and then try to find understanding, try to make sense of what might not make sense at first.
The thing is, if you take the first path, it doesn't do anything constructive. You've got your side, they've got theirs and the conflict will go on. If, instead, you try to understand where they're coming from, it might make it easier to bridge gaps and find common ground. Worst case, you decide you were right to begin with... but, in my experience, there's often something to be learned from every person... unless you out and out think they're lying.
To the posters here suggesting they just take his address down (which he said was incorrect anyway) and let him go and sort out the details later isn't a realistic or correct solution.
If the author could provide reasonable proof of who he was, what he was doing and his standing in the community, then there should be nothing wrong with letting him go, pending further investigation. Take his picture, if you like, but don't detain him any longer than absolutely necessary unless there's overwhelming probable cause to hold him. A vague description is hardly that.
Yes, I'm biased, I believe that having gainful employment in any of a number of fields does make one a tiny bit less suspicious and much more easily found if the investigation goes further.
The argument is that he simply could have easily lied to them and they have no way to verify that. When there is a crime happening and the cops respond the smartest and best course of action is to look for the suspect(s) who are possibly nearby. This guy could have possibly been one of them. Thus they asked for his info, validated who he was, crossed him off of the list and moved on. There wasn't any probable cause to hold him, which they didn't do.
I don't see how it get's much more cut and dry than that.
If you are white, your expectation is that in this situation the cops would have taken you to the victim, she would have said it wasn't you, and you'd go on with your day.
This man's expectation, as a black man being questioned by the police, was that he has a 50/50 chance of being falsely accused; that the woman who was going to give this testimony might just see "black man" and say "that's him officer". In the article, this college professor was so sure of that that he was going to resist arrest!.
It's not about this one interaction, it's about the culture of fear we have in this country between cops and black people. You're not supposed to figure out these particular cops did wrong in this particular encounter - you're supposed to empathize and understand what's generally happening for/to people in different circumstances than yourself, and hopefully have an impact on changing that over time.
Now, I don't know how Boston classifies "try to break into a woman's house", but it looks like my web search in the General Laws of Massachusetts brings up part IV, Title I, Chapter 266, Section 18.[0] Maybe IV I 265 18C [1] if there was someone inside the house.
Based on it being daytime, and the quoted statement from the cop including the words "try to break into" rather than "inside", it would appear that no crime actually occurred. So the cops circulated a vague description of an average-height, average-weight, typically-dressed Bostonian male as a suspect for a nonexistent crime.
The Internet Tough Guys aside, the author did make a mistake in answering police questions. It should have gone something like this:
Cop: Hey my man.
SL: Yes?
Cop: Where are you coming from?
SL: Am I free to go?
Cop: No.
SL: Am I under arrest?
Cop: Not yet.
SL: Why am I being detained?
Cop: We had someone matching your description just try to break into a woman’s house.
SL: [remains silent]
Cop: You fit the description: Black male, knit hat, puffy coat. Do you have identification?
SL: My name is Steve Locke. I live at XXXXX, in Dedham.
Cop: No, no, no, do you have a photo ID card?
SL: I do not consent to searches or seizures. I will not answer further questions without the assistance of legal counsel.
The bystanders made a mistake in not whipping out their cameras to film the incident.
But that ideal conversation does not happen when you are dropped into a stressful situation with no notice. While you're thinking about burritos, an armed man confronts you and informs you that you are a suspect in a crime. Instead of thinking about how to resist police corruption, you're thinking about not getting killed in the next ten minutes. It doesn't matter if you know, rationally, that you have the right to not get murdered by cops, if you also know in your fluttering intestines that Eric Garner and Freddy Grey theoretically had the same right.
[0] https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Cha...
[1] https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleI/Cha...
> Am I free to go?
> Am I under arrest?
> Why am I being detained?
> I do not consent to searches or seizures. I will not answer further questions without the assistance of legal counsel.
I hate to break it to you, but that's a classic example of "Internet Tough Guy".
Maybe if you're a professional lawyer. Everyone else will screw it up somewhere. Following it closely requires an attitude regarding cops somewhere between "Officer Friendly is only here to help" and "these pigs might kill me". That zone on the spectrum for "these guys are cleverly trying to hamstring my lawyer before the trial" is razor thin.
Those on one side will cooperate because they earnestly believe that the innocent do not get punished. Those on the other will cooperate because they believe that resistance is futile in the face of overwhelming force without any form of restraint. The ITG stance is pretty much exclusively held by people who will probably never have the opportunity to try it out on real cops.
Everybody out there in the real world formulates their strategy based on their prior experiences with real cops, rather than activist videos.
I agree. The OP does a great job of capturing the emotions of the moment. Despite this, many commenters here fail to entire context of the situation beyond the legalities. Maybe one reason why people still deny systematic racism exist is it really takes a person to experience it in first-hand to truly understand.
I can't point to anything the officers did 'wrong'. The tragedy of the piece is that the author brings two sets of prejudices to the encounter that really strongly negatively affect him and his perception of the treatment he received:
1) He's special, obviously not a criminal and the cops should know that
2) He's persecuted because of his race.
Neither of these things are objectively true from the content of the article, but the fear he experienced is real.
I can understand what caused that fear - the constant drip of police abuses occurring to people throughout the US, but it's still a sad state of affairs when a man must fear the police in this way.
It's also disheartening to see him take up such a self-involved perspective. The author entirely fails to understand the motives of anyone other than himself and instead ascribes a set of his own prejudices upon the action of others. Far from simply highlighting the prejudice he perceives he endured, he's actually revealed himself as guilty of the exact same charge whilst simultaneously lambasting those for not understanding his motives.
I wonder if this 'victim mentality' is justified given the abuses certain demographics do suffer, but I also wonder if it doesn't also fan the flames of discontent, distrust and ultimately lead to a worsening of relations between civilian and police. If all encounters have this undertone of anger, arrogance and persecution it's no wonder casual encounters can regularly devolve into conflict.
Preparing to draw their guns was probably the first thing. If you want to make someone afraid for their life, prepare the tool you can use to end it.
The second is probably the corralling of the gentleman by multiple officers.
We know that Police officers are told that their primary goal is to "get home at night". We know that they regarded this gentleman as a threat; his intelligent handling of the situation when frightened for his life is probably the one thing that saved him. "May I reach for my id" instead of just grabbing for it. Removing his hands from his pockets... it's not hard to see how this could have gone very, very wrong.
If you want to make someone afraid for their life, second guess them every time they prepare the tool they can use to save it. Remember, it is not just black people getting shot out there.
Even if that is true (And I don't know that it is), doesn't it speak to some greater cultural problem that this man was so scared for his life, being a black man questioned by police?
It's all well and good to say "I've had this happen to me, no problems", but thats dismissing the fact that this man, and many others, fear for their life whenever they interact with the police.
(I should note that I am not American, so maybe theres things I'm missing as an outsider looking in / maybe I'm way off base)
But that's exactly what this blog post does. It's like this is actually propaganda which was created to paint the author as paranoid.
He doesn't tell any real reasons for being afraid, he doesn't seem reasonable and rational at all. He comes to the encounter with preconceived notions and doesn't even try to doubt.
Police brutality and racism are awful issues, and posts like that do real harm because they paint them as paranoid delusions.
This is the whole point, don't you understand?
Consider that your desire to see each encounter as a blank slate, disconnected to each other, is your privilege.
If you're black and encountering with the police, your encounter is full of decades and centuries of "preconceived notions" -- of abuses of power.
"Baseless paranoia"? Ask any black person you know if they think this is baseless paranoia.
This still doesn't make his reaction justified.
Eh, I can only speak anecdotally but almost all white people (who aren't active drug dealers) that I know haven't actually had bad experiences, modulo "the TSA at the airport patted me down!".
The single time that I've had any sort of negative interaction was when crossing the Canadian border and it was directly because my friend in the car had brown skin.
Anecdotal evidence is generally frowned upon when discussing statistics or topics in general terms.
I saw the woman in red.
“Thank you,” I said to her. “Thank you for staying.”
if you have a phone, record it, or just hold your phone as if you were recording it
people can feel the gaze of others and you will alter the behaviour of the officers for the better
just yesterday i was walking by an irate homeless person yelling at three officers, refusing to move
two officers were directing foot traffic to keep a distance and the third was prodding the homeless man with his toe asking him identifying questions and telling him he needed to get up and move
by my just standing there i could sense the officers sensing my presence, every so often they were send me a quick sideways glance
the officer using his foot to interact with the homeless man turned his head to see what his fellow officers kept looking at and saw me, standing there drinking a coffee, staring at him
he jerked his gaze back at the man lying on the ground and knelt down and just placed his hand on the homeless man's shoulder and talked to him calmly
the officer managed to get the man to sit up and answer his questions, eventually he got up and walked away and the officers gave me a look like, 'you happy?!' and got in their cars and drove off
i was happy with how the interaction turned out, the whole thing lasted less than a minute
i would like to think that my presence had little to do with it
More to the point, is this protesting the inappropriate way he was detained, or the atmosphere of fear for black Americans?
Extending the conversation a bit to the intersection of technology, sur|sousveillance[0]:
">[...]creepy stalker[...]
Which are attributes usually assigned to human beings, no? Or do you enjoy being trailed by officers/staff when you shop because of the color of your skin, or do you not have to face nor think about such things when you shop or in other interactions in your life? Because I don't particularly enjoy that either, and I'm doing what I can to address it among other issues assuming that if others could leverage information that is already out there about me, maybe, just maybe I won't have to be treated as subhuman by some on initial interactions, or at least while I patronize a store on occasion. What are you doing to address the problems you have surrounding the use of technology in such ways beyond vocalizing your displeasure? Do you still use social networking, webmail, play apps via smartphone, purchase via credit cards online/offline, etc…? If so, your behaviors are telling others otherwise.
I'm just stating that's the direction things are going in now, and for anyone to avoid such realities means that they shall continue to be suspended in a state of cognitive dissonance. Hardly just my "scheme", I'm just a piece in the puzzle that was already being built before I was even born."
At that point, you might as well just admit that it's an excuse to stop-and-frisk anyone you like, fishing for anything you can find.
I'd hope (but not expect) police to be looking for something a bit firmer, and maybe follow him, but as soon as you're effectively being detained in a public place, you're really messing with folks.
Is it really a "stop-and-frisk anyone you like"?
My daughter's ex-boyfriend, who is Ojibwe and a pretty big guy (6'1" and muscular) got stop-and-frisked all the time, for all sorts of petty made-up crap. This is a kid that I expect will wind up with a PhD on interfacing nervous systems with computers, a kid in college on a Gates Millenium scholarship. They just see a big brown guy and start harassing.
To some, that may mean it seems appropriate to just stop and question everyone. But, in reality, being questioned by the police appears to passers-by to be an indication of guilt, and that's not something you want colleagues and students seeing.
So, again, if you see a guy matching a vague description, see if there's another reason why you'd suspect him.
Have a rock-solid, specific description? Maybe that's a different story. But I'd like to err on the side of caution and respect – there are consequences even if you don't charge the guy.
Given some lady saw the person through a window on the screet, do you think that description at all rules out someone who is 5'9" and 145 lbs from being frisked? Or 6'1" and 180 pounds?
That description becomes "stop and frisk the majority of black males". Once you can frisk a group of 3+ people based on the description of one matching then you will statistically have carte blanche.
Regardless, operating solely on evidence as broad and vague as appearances should warrant some skepticism on the part of the investigating officer, and therefore seems ripe for abuse.
I would just expect some Bayesian reasoning, and "has a home at a reasonably expensive address" and "has a car" and "has MIT ID" would presumably rank quite highly as factors? Unless "is black" ranks so high that it dwarfs all other factors.
Back to this story: you have to check out whomever matches the description and is nearby. The only thing that the police needed to do in this situation was to not make it a situation. Reaching for that gun was The Wrong Thing To Do because this guy was cooperating.
That is exactly what I am saying. If he has a solid address, it is unlikely that he is a small time burglar.
Not sure how IDs work in the US. In Germany you have to register with the police when you move and you are supposed to carry your ID at all times. Of course there is no guarantee that people keep their ID up to date. Then again, I suppose if mail to the old address would be failing it could be marked in the computer, easy to check for the police.
I think you need to multiply P(is a criminal) with <severity of the crime>. If they suspect somebody of being a serial killer, more scrutiny seems appropriate than if they suspect a small time burglar.
I don't see "Serial Killer" levels of scrutiny in this story. I see the right amount of scrutiny, but with a precursor of a cop getting his gun hand ready in a situation that doesn't call for it.
Would they have asked a successful white person to get in their cruiser and transported to the victim for identification? Hell no.
Would they have asked a successful white person to sit and wait for an hour while the victim is brought to them? Hell no.
If the description matched that of a successful white person the cops would have stopped the man, spoken to him for 2 minutes, recorded his identification, and moved on. If he was in fact the culprit then great. They have his ID. That's the important part. Once you know who a bad guy is you can always catch them later.
> Would they have asked a successful white person to sit and wait for an hour while the victim is brought to them? Hell no.
I have no experience with US police, but as a successful white person, this is exactly what I would expect police officers to do to me. Why the hell wouldn't US police do it?
> "I was not going to let them take me anywhere because if they did, the chance I was going to be accused of something I did not do rose exponentially."
Would you feel the same way if you were being stopped by the police in, say, Sudan, where the race of those running the system is not the same as your own?
And this thread seems to have defied his expectations on that as well
1. He wasn't wearing a puffy jacket.
2. His build wasn't a close match for the person they were looking for (the police admitted this themselves).
3. It sounds like he was driving towards the scene of the crime.
Bearing all these things in mind, why would they investigate him?
They all look alike?
https://web.archive.org/web/20151205162353/http://artandever...
I however, do think the police did just an ok job handling this situation. It clearly could have gone worse, but they could have de-escalated this even further. Why isn't it possible to simply say clear statements like "We intend to respect your rights." or "We have no intention of escalating this situation". When it comes to the officer seeming to reach for his firearm at the beginning what's wrong with saying "That's something we do for our protection, and is not an intent to use?"
I'm sure people in law enforcement have answers for all these questions, and I'm sure they make sense. However, something in me will probably always wonder why we as a society find it easier to blog about police encounters, or make police wear body cameras, when it might just be easier for two people to talk more openly.
[Edit: grammar]
Some number of weeks ago, I "fit the description" of a latino male exiting Safeway after having caused some kind of spat in Mountain View. They "identified" the male as having on black shorts and wearing sandals, and some kind of sleeve tattoo if my memory serves.
I am a fairer-skinned black male, I did have on black shorts and Birkinstocks, so close enough I guess. I was over a block away from Safeway, but the cop still felt the need to creep up on me, then bleep his siren, turn around, get out of his SUV and question me.
The cop felt the need to know if - simple Silicon Valley yuppie me, carrying a Starbucks cup from earlier in the day and a fresh bag of Thai food with a receipt dated no more than nine minutes prior - I had gang tattoos and/or affiliations, asked me to roll up my sleeves. He needed to know why my out-of-state drivers license didn't have my current California address (no, I'm dead serious, I guess he couldn't figure it out.)
Of course, I grew up in the deep south so I'm more than used to this, and know how to keep my head on when dealing with a police officer who is holier than thou and is packing the hardware to prove it to you at a twitch's notice. My upbringing taught me that, as a black person, this is what we have to expect from officials, be it police, school officials, any petty tyrant's office job. This is why you don't talk to the cops and you keep your head down when walking - your skin still says enough about you.
However, even after climbing the broken ladder, fighting my way out of abject poverty through stacks of student loans, it was truly disheartening to see it's still true, even here in the land of million dollar homes and self driving cars.
I've felt this man's fear.
Actually, that's the law, if you've been in CA more than 20 days or accepted a job here. Otherwise, you are technically not licensed to drive here.
"I was hoping that someone I knew would walk down the street or come out of one of the shops or get off the 39 bus or come out of JP Licks and say to these cops, “That’s Steve Locke. What the FUCK are you detaining him for?”"
IOW, "do you know who I am?"
There are legitimate abuses of police authority and unaccountability, and this is not one.
"They did not realize that I am an individual of high socioeconomic status, one whom should not be treated like a prole."
There are many clear cut examples of police racism and abuse of power. This does not seem to be one of them.
did you not look at the picture?
He writes in his own words that he was wearing a quilted blazer.
Latin genu knee + flectere to bend
to bend the knee
to touch the knee to the floor or ground especially in worshipI was dressed in a long wool jacket with a nice shirt on, and got stop by the police. Apparently, it was suspicious that someone would be jogging in that type of attire, and there had been a hit-and-run a bit away from there, and I fit the description of the person that ran.
It was a bit surreal -- an officer started immediately asking me questions, including identification, what was in my pockets, etc. After telling him just a glove was in my jacket pocket, he came up to me and quickly felt himself. Satisfied that I had answered honestly, he asked me to wait as a second police car drove up.
The first officer looked back to the second police car and asked if this was the guy -- the second police officer took one look at me, looked back at the guy angrily, and shook his head slowly no in one of the largest looks of contempt I had seen. After that, I was back on my way.
This story brings me back to that moment, but to be honest I have not thought about it since, and now I wonder if I should have done something differently. Should I have resisted? Should I have proclaimed my rights and had them try to arrest me? Was I too meek in allowing them to frisk me briefly? Was there some sort of prejudicial motivation for what happened? Was I wrong to simply forget that moment afterwards, and not attribute to malice?
I have no doubt police target people, due to prejudice of some kind, in many different cities. And I also do not want to in any way dismiss or diminish someone's fear, someones worries, or someone's feeling like they were targeted directly because of their race or ethnicity, their gender, or their beliefs.
But is there a lesson to be learned from this story? Is it a story of a man who felt enormous fear when approached by the police, and how that still reflects the worry many minorities feel in society with regards to the police? Is it a story about how a man was targeted unfairly due to his race, due to prejudice still present in law enforcement? I'm not sure the takeaway from this -- only that a man was stopped on the street, and that he felt pain from that experience. Do I share this pain having gone through something similar? Do I rewrite my own experience and feel pain? Or do I continue as I have -- not attributing to malice until proven otherwise? It's not clear, and I'm not sure how to take this and use it for the better.
It was assumed that I needed to prove my innocence rather than they prove my guilt. Luckily I happened to be across the country on that day so it was easily dropped. I was denied to see the police report after multiple requests, which I thought I was entitled to.
This one experience greatly changed the way I view police and their tactics. I can empathize
This was not a trial. How do you propose to eliminate suspects, if convincing yourself that they are innocent is not permitted?
His paranoia is a likely a result of his previous encounters with other police officers and hearsay from other encounters. This particular encounter sounds right.
They thanked him repeatedly for cooperation, apologized for messing with his lunch break, etc. This is their job, what could they do better? Not investigate since he said "it's not me, honest"?!?
Nope, I still don't get it. Thanks for the perspective though.
A (white) friend of mine used to wear the wrong kind of jacket, associated with left youth, and the cops would also sometimes search him, and even do anal probing for hidden pot. (All this is for Germany, mind you).
Also the stories about calling SWAT teams to innocent people's houses, or the unreliability of forensics, are really scary. I think "unfairly detained or killed by cops" has to be accepted as another modern risk, like being run over by a car or getting cancer. And unfortunately the risk is probably higher for people with dark skin.
Second, I see a subtle racial angle to this, and as a white person I too have been stopped by the police several times. White police are not singling out black people.
getting barraged by dovecotes but will not remove the post because I think it is still helpful, or at least encourage discussion about the matter
You know, a lot of Internet Tough Guys(tm) make this claim. Only those who have been stopped by cops randomly (I have, and I'm not white) will understand that this is nearly impossible. You are intimidated. You know that you have basically no rights; they'll just charge you with "obstruction of justice" or "disobeying a lawful order" and throw you into the justice( * ) system, where you'll end up wasting countless hours and dollars before "all charges are dropped". A white person, on the other hand, has a strong feeling of "I have rights". Most non-whites don't.
( * ) for some definition of "justice"
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/15/340419821/after-a-traffic-stop...
"So I ask them, 'Can I please see a warrant before you continue the search?' " Landau says. "And they grab me and began to hit me in the face. I could hear Addison in the background yelling, 'Stop! Leave him alone.'
I may have allowed an annoyed look to appear on my face.
Seconds later, this same guy was pulling me over. The reason? My vehicle stickers expire February 28th. I renewed online late in the month (the shortest month, naturally), and the replacement stickers had not yet arrived in the mail. Fortunately for me, I had the printed receipt of my renewal transaction on the front passenger seat of my car. (The stickers arrived in the mail later that day.)
While walking away, the guy tells me, "Next time don't wait until the last minute to renew." ~Dude. I'm sorry that my timely production of exculpatory evidence precluded you from ratcheting one tick closer to your ticket quota.~ If you're going to be overzealous in enforcing the revenue laws, I don't need to hear any complaints about me paying the full amount and on time.
Next time, and all subsequent times, I will try the "not making your job easier" approach. You can't treat people like moustache-twirling villains half the time, and soulless cash machines the other half, and still expect them to respect you. I know he had an in-car computer that showed him my current registration and insurance status. He probably pulled me over because I gave him a dirty look for screwing up car line, and he wanted to be an extra-big dick about it.
The policing for profit has to stop. Whether its from dubious municipal court fines and fees or War on Drugs grants, the distorted flow of money is rewriting the relationship between police and public. The public is simultaneously employer to and customer of the police. That means that the cop has the burden of being professional and respectful at all times, even in the face of horrendous rudeness.
When a waiter or delivery driver gets stiffed on a tip, they suck it up, maybe post a pic to social media, and move on. When a cop gets frowned at, they swagger up, solicit some respeck for their authoritah, and maybe hurt someone while the cameras are inexplicably turned off. It should not matter whether or not the public gives or withholds respect. Those cops are on the clock and serving customers. If those customers are curt with front-line employees, perhaps it is because the company as a whole has been behaving as badly as AT&T or Comcast.
Just as you may get better results being calm and polite with your customer service rep while on the phone with those companies, you still might get a freakin' Ernestine, not caring about you, because the company is a [local] monopoly and it doesn't have to. In that case, you're better off sticking to your own script and recording everything.
I'm not really sure how you came to this conclusion. You are correct about many things here, but the solution is not to become defiant; that will only result in, at a minimum, more hassle for you, like the officer writing an invalid citation anyway because he can, thus forcing you to either pay or waste an afternoon at traffic court to try to get it thrown out.
As a result, when I perceive that someone is working against my own interests, I will do anything within the bounds of my own ethics to trip them up, even to my own detriment. I want to waste lots of nights and weekends mailing documents in to traffic court, to try to get that revenue-generating municipal summons turned into a money-losing jury trial, with plenty of motions and discovery and appeals.
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." --H.D. Thoreau
Under a government which funds itself by forcing citizens to pay more in order to be hassled less, choosing to accept the inconvenience might be considered an altruistic act....[0] But in my case, it would be purely for spite. From Hell's heart, I stab at thee, Captain Kirk.
If you want to let those bastards get away with their scam just because you can't stand to have a little manure tossed at you, go right ahead. I hope you enjoy smelling nice and not having any parts of your face broken when you go out with your fancy respectable folk.
The cops say "you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride." Well, Cave Johnson says, "I'm going to burn life's house down, with the lemons!" (He says what we're all thinking.) If you want to take me on a ride, don't forget that you'll have to drive the whole way. If you're intentionally inconveniencing me, as as informal punishment, remember this: "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." --G.B. Shaw.
[0] Poe's Law note: this is the inflection point between mostly-sincere and mostly-insincere. Determining which is which is left as an exercise for the reader.
If a normal person shot you, they'd be arrested that night. For police, if they're ever arrested, it will probably many months later, after someone in the organization has decided that they don't like the officer involved in the shooting anyway--err, I mean, after Internal Affairs completes the investigation.
The moment they claim they were intimidated/frightened, then time and time again we've seen that any use of force becomes justified by police somehow. Just being black means they'll claim that feeling should things go wrong.
Dead right or dead wrong... is still dead.
Not really. Cops escalate against whites too and are often on a hair trigger. We just have to accept that the type of people our police forces attract as officers, with present combination of required qualifications and incentives, are most likely not going to be the most even-headed or rational members of society. If we really care about improving policing, we want to increase the incentives so that the job attracts the best and brightest instead of the washed-up football players that can't hack it at junior college.
I'm white and probably 40% of my interactions with police have been unpleasant just because those policemen felt like feeling important that day. You just have to grin and bear it, because doing otherwise risks escalation. Submission is the component most victims of escalation neglect.
The "racial divide" is less of a thing than it's made out to be; race is just one signal among many. One thing is for sure though, and that's that the media is very interested in provoking racial tension, rioting, and other "exciting" news events.
I know that this is the common advice now, but I see it as a symptom of the serious problems the US has. The police is supposed to protect law and order. If you're not a crook, you shouldn't be afraid of talking to officers. When innocent people are so scared of interacting with law enforcement that they have to execute right to silence as a default, it means the situation is deteriorating into oppressive state.
His mistake was answering the officer's initial questions.
This is a great thing for white people to be aware of.
If I am approached by a person, any person, who has a holstered gun and an official looking outfit (or hell, just a holstered gun), the position I'm in is not one of "what am I legally allowed to do", it is one of "a person with a gun wants me to answer a question". A gun is danger signal to most people and the result is compliance regardless of rights. And if you have some place to be, most people figure it's going to take less time to sort out proving their non-involvement in whatever they're being questioned on than getting taken to the station for proper questioning with legal counsel.
On your "I'm a white person and have been stopped by the police several times", I didn't read that the author was particularly angry that the police stopped him because he was black. He was angry because they simply didn't believe him despite his collection of circumstantial evidence that he was not involved.
It was logical that he police questioned him -- he was in proximity and matched the description. Obviously the police weren't similarly grabbing white people off the street in this situation -- that would be idiotic -- the witness said the person was black. I don't think they (the cops) behaved particularly badly in this situation but I don't blame the guy for being completely shaken up.
Being accused, even mildly, by the police is an extremely stressful situation. When I was a kid (yes, I'm a white guy), I was in a parking lot of a strip mall in front of a large chain store that had closed 30 minutes prior to my arrival. My girlfriend and I had just gotten into an argument and were finishing it up in the car before heading to a restaurant next-door and I chose to park in front of the store because I was driving my new car (my first, paid for with my own savings) and didn't want to get a ding from a carelessly handled door on a neighboring vehicle. Twenty minutes into the conclusion of our argument, flashing lights appeared behind my vehicle.
I was questioned, my word was completely disregarded and my girlfriend was put in the awkward situation of having to prove she wasn't a prostitute I had paid for (they took our IDs and asked her what my street address was). Evidently she was too far out of my league for the police officer to believe she was actually my girlfriend! The experience was awful. My anxiety went through the roof (further giving the appearance of guilt) and it was about as embarrassing a situation as I could have found myself in.