This story is a sad statement on what Americans have become...

[tblue37]

12. The clerk claims that she did not make any statements about ISIS, so it sounds as though her father

and sister did lie knowingly, probably thinking that would get the cops to show up faster. My guess is that in their xenophobic paranoia, they believed the nervous clerk was in real danger from the scary "Ayrab, so they called the cops and said whatever they thought they needed to say to make them hurry to the hotel to "save" the sister/daughter clerk."

I vaguely remember another case in which the caller who claimed his backpack had been stolen by a black teenager (who as it turned out was innocent, of course) deliberately lied about a gun. I don't remember for sure, but I think the kid he accused was either hurt or killed. When asked why he had falsely claimed the kid had a gun, the caller said he just thought it would be a way to make sure the cops came quickly.

Considering how often the often completely innocent (and almost always unarmed) "suspect" ends up badly hurt or dead, you'd think people would hesitate to call the cops when there is no good reason to, and especially refrain from claiming their "suspect" has a gun when they know perfectly well that he does not. Apparently, though, a lot of people feel no compunction about putting another human being at risk of serious injury or death if that other person happens to be "other" in their minds.