Reply #183: I can promise you from experience that just is not true

[jobycom]

Somewhere back up the chain I related a story about my experiences in retail, and the different ways black people are treated over white people. I didn't give enough detail, apparently. The same manager that threatened to fire me if I called security on a white woman we both saw shoplifting CHASED DOWN a black shoplifter not three weeks later. She ran out of the store and caught this woman in the parking lot, pushing her against a car to capture her. I repeat, this is the same woman who let a white shoplifter, who lifted an item almost three times the value of the one shoplifted by the black woman, go scott free.

That's one story, but I saw it over and over. Yes, race has a lot to do with the way a criminal is treated, not just be individuals, but by cops. One of my other jobs was night audit at a luxury hotel, and I got to work overnight with a lot of cops, who rotated night security for the place. Racism is just assumed, even by cops. They'll flat out tell you, once they know you, that black people commit more crimes, so therefore they watch them more closely. I've hard well-decorated cops describe shaking down a black teenager for jaywalking, because the kid had looked at him funny two streets back. I've heard the same cop describe letting a white college student go free after the student took a swing at him. This is a well respected, well liked, and since then, highly placed officer in the police force. His behavior was just standard, and the only cops I knew of that disagreed were a few of the Hispanic cops. Interestingly, no black cops were hired to work security by this hotel, so I don't know their opinions.

I firmly believe--and this belief comes from being friends with a few dozen cops as well as ten years experience in retail and hotels, that how a shoplifting suspect is treated depends NOT ONE BIT on his actions, and depends ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY on his or her race, from the moment they walk into a store to the moment the jail cell slams behind them. If they are white, they can be pretty sure they will never hear a jail cell slam behind them. I don't ever recall actually seeing a white person arrested for shoplifting, in fact, though I've seen a few caught. They were, in my experiences, always let go.