Everyone has heard about the common offense (at least in police eyes) of “Driving While Black” but this is a new twist. A white man who is babysitting his 5-year-old black granddaughter is hassled (more than once) by police.
Mind you, we are only seeing one side of this story, but his account certainly has “truthiness”.
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6 Comments
While there’s a racial issue, there’s also probably a gender issue. After all, all men are perverts when they’re with little girls.
There are two issues here; human psychology and police training. The former can be fixed with evolutionary adaptation, the latter just takes a few hours. Let’s start with the easy one.
On the one hand, if he had been a child abductor, the police would have been eviscerated for not taking the threat seriously. That said, the police could have gone about their business in a MUCH better fashion. I believe some police departments have as their first requirement for employment that one be a complete asshole first and foremost.
And let’s not forget, the vast majority of abductions of children are not from total strangers.
I am a grandpa who regularly babysits my grandkids 2 of who are Black, 1 White, 1 Mexican, & 1 Mixed (3 adopted, 2 “Natural”) – 2 of them fulltime until they started school – I’m torn here, I have a nice who was shopping, was distracted by one woman while another almost took off with her baby (and was charged with “excessive force – later dropped – for beating the crap out of her) so, I wouldn’t have minded being questioned but would find a way to sue over being hand-cuffed and the way the child was treated.
Let me be clear, I’m not objecting to the police questioning him, especially since someone had called in a report. But handcuffing him and grabbing the child? And how many officers did it take to do this?
The police should have asked, but they were way over the top in how they handled it. Perhaps some good ole customer service training would help.
I have worked with many cops and still do. Their instincts are usually good, but what i’ve seen is the smaller or more local the force the greater tendency to over react. In light of all the sexual predation, abductions and unthinkable crimes against children I’m glad someone in the neighborhood actually reported something instead of closing their eyes. It’s just a shame it was a false alarm and led to a bad incident.