Grandfather accused of abducting his grandson because of their different skin tones

[gratuitous]

4. A suspicious circumstances call, this isn't a swatting

Yeah, it's bad that this guy had to explain himself, but on the galactic scale of horrible wrongs in the universe, this seems like kind of small potatoes.

I had my own suspicious circumstance a few years ago. On my morning bicycle commute, I heard a dog yelping from inside a house. No big thing, dogs yelp all the time. When I went home in the evening, more yelping from the same house. Now I'm a little concerned. The next day, dog is still (or maybe again) yelping, and my antennae are definitely up. Do I call Animal Control or not? If the dog's been abandoned in that house and is starving to death, I'd hate to think that I'd heard it crying for help and did nothing. Give it one more day. Sure enough, the next day more yelping, so I call Animal Control. They do a welfare check on the address, the owner(s) is/are home, and give a satisfactory account of whatever was going on.

Did I feel bad, siccing the authorities on the owners? A little. But how would I have felt if it turned out the owners had abandoned the dog, or if the owner had suffered a totally disabling or deadly health event, and hadn't been discovered for days or weeks? Was Mr. Mata inconvenienced? Yes. But what if it really was an abduction and nobody had done anything? It's not an easy call either way.