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KamaAina

(78,249 posts)
Thu May 7, 2015, 04:52 PM May 2015

A cop's plea: Stop calling in "suspicious activity" every time you see a black person

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/6/8561439/police-officer-reddit

Police shootings of black men over the past year have put a national spotlight on racial disparities in how cops use force and in the criminal justice system — but at least one officer is doing his part to get people to stop being racist.

Reddit user sf7, who's listed as a verified law enforcement officer on Reddit, asked people to stop calling in "suspicious behavior" when they see black people doing completely normal things:

These types of calls are a genuine problem, especially when the full details aren't relayed to dispatched officers. Last November, a 911 caller reported Tamir Rice when the black 12-year-old boy was throwing snowballs and playing with a toy gun at a Cleveland park — behavior the caller apparently found suspicious, although the caller noted that the gun was "probably fake." Within two seconds of arriving at the scene and getting out of his squad car, Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann shot and killed Rice. Police claim Loehmann wasn't told by the dispatcher that the gun was "probably fake."

So not only can these phone calls be a waste of time for cops, but they can lead to seriously dangerous confrontations.
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A cop's plea: Stop calling in "suspicious activity" every time you see a black person (Original Post) KamaAina May 2015 OP
911 dispatchers need to hang up on every racist who calls in a suspicious "black guy" 951-Riverside May 2015 #1
That goes triple for this piece of dog shit: Guy Whitey Corngood May 2015 #2
BS. The police are called to investigate. That is their job. Downwinder May 2015 #3
Investigate what? The irrational fears of white racists? frylock May 2015 #4
Police are called on white neighbors. Downwinder May 2015 #5
ummmmmmm... frylock May 2015 #7
Attention George Zimmerman lame54 May 2015 #6
Errrr... Number23 May 2015 #8
 

951-Riverside

(7,234 posts)
1. 911 dispatchers need to hang up on every racist who calls in a suspicious "black guy"
Thu May 7, 2015, 04:59 PM
May 2015

and the people who make these calls need to be held financially responsible.

Enough is enough.

Downwinder

(12,869 posts)
3. BS. The police are called to investigate. That is their job.
Thu May 7, 2015, 05:34 PM
May 2015

If they can not take the time to do that, they should not be police.

Number23

(24,544 posts)
8. Errrr...
Thu May 7, 2015, 07:52 PM
May 2015
It's very likely that outright racism isn't behind many of these bad calls. Instead, social psychologists point to what's called "implicit bias," which is subconscious bias that can lead people to think, for example, that black people are associated with crime.




If that isn't a clear a case of outright, straight up racism then I truly don't know what is. Calling it cutesy names like "implicit bias" does not change that at all.
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