Minnesota Campus Multi-Culti Cabal: Leave Race Out Of Crime Reports
About a year ago, a guy hopped the fence of the apartment court next to my house into my yard and then vaulted over my front gate -- no easy feat, as it's six feet high.
I called the cops and described him: Black guy, about 18, with close-cropped hair, a blue backpack, and green and purplish plaid bermuda shorts.
Well, at University of Minnesota, there's one part of that that some on campus want left out -- the "black guy" part. Which is kind of like telling someone to describe me without saying I have red hair. Which would be an idiotic, twice-round-the-block and up the tree after the squirrel way of describing me.
At Campus Reform, Katherine Timpf reports that black student, staff, and faculty groups want mentions of race banished from school's crime alerts:
University of Minnesota (UM) officials are discussing a proposal which would ban any mention of race when describing a suspect in a crime alert.The officials are discussing the matter with student and faculty groups who wrote a letter to the school claiming that the use of racial descriptions in crime alerts leads to racial profiling, according to the local CBS affiliate website.
Um, it's called criminal profiling. If somebody mugs you and he's a white guy with a bandanna on his head, it helps the cops find him if they know that.
What, we're going to say to cops, "Somebody mugged me, but I refuse to tell you really salient parts of his description"? And expect them to do much more than throw up their hands and go back to the police station?
In a December 6, 2013 letter to UM President Eric Kaler and the Vice President of University Services Pamela Wheelock, several black student, faculty, and staff groups wrote that they "unanimously agree that campus safety should be of the UMPD's utmost importance; however, efforts to reduce crime should never be at the expense of our Black men, or any specific group of people likely to be targeted."
The person to target is the person who committed the crime. It's hard enough for a lot of people to remember things when under stress. To have to leave out the race of the person who did a crime to you is just ridiculous and promotes crime rather than stopping it.
I get that folks want to avoid another Charles Tuart, but there's gotta be a happy medium between rounding up all the black guys and not describing them at all!!!
NicoleK at February 19, 2015 11:58 PM
Given the vast majority of black crime VICTIMS are target by black criminals, its almost like this asinine initiative is designed to make it easier to accuse cops of failing to arrest perpetrators of crimes against black people.
lujlp at February 20, 2015 1:40 AM
Next, please don't mention the gender as that would also be discriminatory. AMIRITE???
DrCos at February 20, 2015 3:27 AM
No, no, DrCos, that's still discriminatory. It might have been a giant squirrel, you wouldn't want to be guilty of species profiling would you?
Ltw at February 20, 2015 3:45 AM
Aww, I can't resist. Amy, if someone asked me to describe you vaulting over my fence, the red hair wouldn't get a look in until after the boobs and the waist.
I'm pretty certain Id get the skin colour right.
Ltw at February 20, 2015 3:50 AM
In our state, the parolee database (open to the public) uses Caucasian or Non-Caucasian in the race section.
tasha at February 20, 2015 3:53 AM
Maybe "criminal" vs. "non-criminal"?
Oh, wait, innocent until proved guilty!
Dwatney at February 20, 2015 4:27 AM
Hah, LTW.
Amy Alkon at February 20, 2015 5:35 AM
So, cops, like all of the rest of us, are lazy. In their case, there is a tendency to see "black man" and leave off reading any other identifying details, at which point they "profile" willy-nilly any random black man they come across. I can understand why black communities are tired of this.
Completely leaving off "black" in a suspect description isn't the way to fix the problem of course. Still, if I were ever to take up robbing Venice businesses, I might avail myself of a red wig and an evening gown. It's the perfect disguise!
Astra at February 20, 2015 5:54 AM
>>So, cops, like all of the rest of us, are lazy.
There is a real issue here in not being able to properly identify people of a race other then your own. It turns out that different races have different "markers" they use in identifying specific individuals. For example if you belong to a demographic that varies in eye and hair color, you will tend to use eye and hair color as part of your identification process. If you encounter an individual of a demographic that has generally homogenous eye and hair color, they will "all look alike to you."
Matt at February 20, 2015 7:38 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect
Conan the Grammarian at February 20, 2015 10:56 AM
Isn't this a pretty old issue by now? I recall stuff like this from at least 10, 20 years ago. Has anyone done any studies on how this has affected policing, prosecutions, crime?
It does make me wonder though how they would handle video footage that is good enough to seemingly distinguish height, mannerisms, clothing, and even race, but not good enough to narrow it down to a single individual.
"BOLO for a person that looks like well, um, the person you see in this video."
jerry at February 20, 2015 12:46 PM
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