Quote:
Originally Posted by Barefoot
I guess the point of this entire thread is ... what is the definition of suspicious behavior?.
To some people, it might be an old car driving slowly down a street
To others, it might be two young guys we don't recognize carrying TVs and jewellery boxes out of a house.
The cops say they don't mind being called, so perhaps we shouldn't worry if we bombard them with calls.
Last year in our Village, one of the neighbors was concerned when he spotted people he didn't know parking cars and walking through a couple of back yards.
It made him very nervous. He said he called the police a couple of times but they never came.
That's my sole experience.
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All we are doing is beating a dead horse here, and are getting nowhere. I think we are all educated enough here to know what constitutes a suspicous behavior in general, and obviously we all have our own specific examples. If you don't want the police called when strangers are in your house or yard , tell your neighbors not to bother calling the police at all, or call the the non emergency police dispatch number and tell them to mark your house as a do not respond if anyone call the police. The police do NOT have the time to listen to 30 mins of ..."well, I think they were black, or maybe white..., BUT I am not prejudiced, so maybe I shouldn't give you a color, and well, they might just be there to pull some weeds, and they don't have any markings on their truck, but maybe the sign fell off....." If there were an actual emergency, your neighbors might just be dead by then. Of course, that's sarcastic, and this is not directed at you Barefoot, but if you want the police there for you, call them or tell your neighbors to call. If you don't then, don't bother them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
And if you were black and were very aware of the real issues of driving while black, walking while black, shopping while black, you also would be very aware that even without any conscious discriminatory intent our culture and the person who called the cop had just a bit of extra alertness and extra suspicion when it was a black person who was picking some weeds. If you don't understand that view of how it happens too often and impacts the black experience in America you are not listening. It has been Oprah and Condoleezza not just those you don't know like this landscaper. No one is color blind in our society, not those on the left either. And for anyone to state that this man's color did not play a role in the aroused suspicion of the neighbor is ignoring reality.
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I doubt you will believe me, but I was not raised to be prejudiced. My parents both grew up in a coal mine town along with black people, and they all lived there together back in the 20's +. I have no idea what black people have gone through in their lives, but I do know that I have heard just as many black people who are prejudiced as white people, and just about every other ethnic groups have people who are prejudiced. But it will never , ever get any better until people stop blaming everything on race. The people who were there in the worst of the race problems are dead and gone, and people are still crying race or religion. We have a black President now, do you think he was elected by just the black people???