Racial profiling
The other night I went to a neighborhood meeting that addressed the rash of burglaries on Moss and Carrollton. The burglar is described as an older black man with dreds working with a young black man (the composite photo of which is now taped to my front door) along with a possible woman accomplice. One of the neighbors said after everyone was swept up into a huffy fury, “I saw a young black man running on the bayou with a hoodie.” Oh dear, I thought, here we go.
The captain said we can’t stop a man in a hoodie, I was on the bayou this morning and saw a couple of people running with a hoodie. That would be racial profiling.
This morning, the main burglar in question was spotted by T on Carrollton, basically checking out houses. Now it could have been an older black man with dreds and a big backpack simply admiring the architecture at 8:20 am, but let’s just say it wasn’t. So I called 911 and reported him as a suspicious character. Meanwhile, I got a call that a friend’s alarm was going off who happens to live right where the guy was seen so I called and it was nothing but it got an officer calling me back and forth several times.
He said he was concerned about stopping someone unless he caught them in the act because he is a white cop and he didn’t want to be stopping a black man just walking down the street. I said, I know, but he fits the description of the guy breaking in. He said, I don’t want to be racial profiling. I said, I don’t want to either.
He called me back afterwards and said that he was still in the neighborhood and hadn’t spotted the guy but he wanted to apologize because he said he didn’t want to come across as if he was not going to look for him and yet he didn’t want to come across as if he was looking for any black man walking down the street. I said, I hear you, years ago when they first put up ATM machines, a friend drove up to hers and a black young man was hanging out in front of it and she got back in her car and left. She said I didn’t want to be scared of a young black man by an ATM machine, but I was. I told him I’m a white mother with a black son and I certainly don’t want him profiled and I wish our houses weren’t being robbed and I certainly wish it wasn’t a black man doing it in predominantly white residences, but it is what it is.
I don’t know, the next thing you know we might find out the black burglar is gay too. Or worse, Jewish.