9 ms·

After reading the first paragraph I already knew where this was headed. White America welcome to black America. You'll be arrested for nothing at all. The firs

by yardie 13y ago

After reading the first paragraph I already knew where this was headed. White America welcome to black America. You'll be arrested for nothing at all. The first time it happens you'll be really upset and threaten to sue, and file a police report. And when you do there will be some sort of roadblock, they won't have the forms, the officer in question wasn't on shift that night, the detective is quite hostile to you, the victim. You'll learn what I've learned. Don't trust the police for shit. All of the things I've listed I've done and it only made life difficult until I left for college.

adsenseclient 13y ago
Third world countries have third world police for a reason: out of necessity.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Jun8 13y ago
It seems you have been the victim of a similarly unjust arrest, but frankly I can't see how you "already knew where this was headed" after the first paragraph. Given the photo at the top, at first glance I assumed that the woman at the lectern was the OP, only towards the end of the story did I get understand that the OP was a man. I cannot see any reference to the OP being black in the text (his About thumbnail is too small to see clearly).
- Gracana 13y ago
  yardie isn't saying the author was black. They're saying that this is the typical experience of black people's interactions with police in the united states. Whereas the author is surprised at being treated this way, many people learn to expect it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
pessimizer 13y ago
As a black programmer, I remember the cliche about problems and regular expressions in my head as "regular expressions are like calling the cops." That's unfair to regular expressions, though, because I actually have seen them solve a problem before. Cops improving a situation? Never seen it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- RMacy 13y ago
  Cops are in a weird place. People don't like them until they need them. I work with a lot of cops and most of them are good (and yes they can occasionally get overreaching) but that generalization widens the divide between on-duty police officers and civilians. I would say if we treated them like I get treated being part time Military (hand shaken, dinners, etc) that they will be better people. You'll also see less of this. Humans like positive situations, they like being praised, they like feeling loved and needed. They will defend the things they hold dear.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure we all know or have known cops. The ones I've known definitely love praise. They seem upset and angry that people aren't praising them constantly, in my experience. Very high opinions of themselves. </(probably) unfair stereotype and generalization>
  - jcc80 13y ago
    Hero worship is not the answer and may actually contribute to the problem. The solution is basic accountability ie police do not investigate themselves and a change of culture from "war on crime" to community policing. As someone else commented here, the police training actually turns well meaning future officers against the average citizen. An example re: accountability is the California city that significantly reduced complaints by requiring officers to wear cameras. Small sample size but encouraging. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/wearable-video-cameras-for-police-officers.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/wearable-video-ca...
nutate 13y ago
As a white person thrown into psychiatric solitary a couple times, I'd say that he got pretty cushy treatment compared to what black folks get. No trial, out in 12 hours? Try that if you're black. Sounds crazy, but considering how many questions he was asking the officers after they'd cuffed him he got off quite easy. I wonder if my friends that went to UCSF around the same time as him knew him. I know a lot of folks like him, but they don't know much standard "know your rights" type stuff that teaches you to do nothing, say nothing once you are cuffed. Unless you are making them laugh, you're probably on their bad side.
- yardie 13y ago
  I've spent an entire weekend in holding for resisting arrest. There is no food and nowhere to sleep in holding. On Monday, when I finally met the magistrate, all charges were dropped because nothing happened. When I tell my white friends this story they logically conclude I must have done something, police don't simply "detain" you without cause. Yes, they do. My other friends are much more understanding. Either it has happened to them or someone they know.
  - nutate 13y ago
    Uhh... dude that was your fault for getting arrested on a weekend. Duh... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment are really important subjects for people who want to understand their freedoms. If you are a danger to yourself, others or gravely disabled you may be taken into a hospital and honestly you should be. If you are arrested, you might be held for up to 72 hours in the US. I think there are a lot of really good reasons for those laws honestly, but they can trip up people who are focusing on broad constitutional aphorisms instead of real state and local policy.
    - yardie 13y ago
      Well, goddamn me for being "a black male, between 5 and 6 feet."
incision 13y ago
>"White America welcome to black America." Pretty much. I was honestly dumbstruck by the naiveté expressed as soon as the action starts. "She turned to me and abruptly said that I was not needed as a witness and should leave immediately. I told her we were headed home, just across the way, when my friend and I encountered the accident; and that I’d recently broken my elbow in a similar bike accident here and deeply cared about the outcome." It's an odd mixture of feelings to read about someone who lives in the same country I do who was able to grow into adulthood without having to learn the basic rules some of us had to learn by 4th grade.
- AngrySkillzz 13y ago
  Basic rules like "have no compassion" and "respect people with guns?"
  - beat 13y ago
    Respect != fear. Watching your mouth because you fear the authorities with guns is quite the opposite of respect.
  - moheeb 13y ago
    No...more like "leave when the cops show up". What is some drunk yahoo gonna do to help after the call has been made? I'm sure the cops have all kinds of anecdotes about how helpful the drunks loitering around a scene at 1AM are!
    - late2part 13y ago
      I don't believe the police have any right to give a lawful order to compel a citizen from leaving a public area unless there is a public disturbance or danger. The samaritan, according to her own story, was not creating a problem. 3 drinks in 3 hours makes few people intoxicated. The people have a right, nay, an obligation, to resist unlawful orders. If her story is true and accurate, that law enforcement officer and the jailors with poor behaviors need to be fired, arrested, and prosecuted. I don't care what bad examples "cop logic" can use to justify their immoral and prejudicial thoughts. This story is a travesty and LE's actions reprehensible.
mdisraeli 13y ago
I'm glad it wasn't just me who felt like that. I'm white, middle class, and grew up in Britain as a native. But as a member of multiple minority groups, I've seen hints of this world, and it is not pretty :( The worst part of all this? First thing I did was check the author's gender and skin colour. And then I read the article. I normally work hard to be free of the prejudice of this society we are forced to live in, and yet I realised I took this article more seriously because it was by a white male :( That is why it is vital to understand privilege, and that we live in a society that is constantly pushing its values that we cannot help but to make such mistakes. That it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, how much of a meritocracy you think your community has, but if it isn't free from the constant pressure of our base society (ie, realistically impossible), you'll end reading something like this and trying to excuse away those thoughts I just admitted.
- Crake 13y ago
  Just because you are prejudiced in favor of white people doesn't mean every other white person alive is also a racist.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    There are shades of racism. At the extreme racist end, there are those who genuinely and explicitly believe that dark skin makes you a worthless scum. At the other end, there are people who feel, at a gut level, that skin colour is irrelevant. Between the two, there are people who will infer various things from skin colour, such as the propensity to crime, IQ, or whatever. The sad fact is, a correct assessment of reality is racist to some extent. Not because of skin colour, mind you, but because of confounding factors such as income, or self-fulfilling prophecies such as racism itself. Correlation is not causation, but the correlation is still there, and we can still draw inferences from them. As for my personal assessment of the credibility of this story, I assumed the guy was white to begin with. If I believed he was black, I would have been like "of course", and marked off the story as even more credible. Because I have this stereotype in my head about police being racist. I'm now wondering to what extent this is actually true…
  - 13y ago
mathattack 13y ago
I was thinking similar. If police will crap on someone like this when they misperceive that they're wealthy and can afford a lawyer (wannabe billionaire) imagine what they do to people who can't defend themselves. It's a very sickening abuse of power. Perhaps the one good piece of the story is that it gets the word out.
gumballhead 13y ago
So awesome and true. There is no situation the police can't make worse.
dopamean 13y ago
Off topic: are you Jamaican? (I ask because of the username).
- yardie 13y ago
  You guessed correct!
  - dopamean 13y ago
    Excellent. I was born in Kingston. Grew up in the States though.
    - yardie 13y ago
      Girls town. Grew up in Miami.
cleaver 13y ago
I gained a perspective that is a bit more in depth than the typical white guy. I went to university in a town in Canada where the police seemed to be very interested in guys with long hair. I had long hair. As a result, I got stopped, intimidated and threatened by the police. I was never arrested. No doubt I would have had it worse if I was black. A few years later I moved to Toronto. I still had long hair, but the police seemed to ignore me. I was really curious and paid extra attention to the police. It took a while, but it finally hit me: "they're only interested in the black guys!" The black guys were being watched with the same sort of intensity that I had experienced. I didn't observe the same sort of interactions I had, but I could imagine. Canada is a bit different from the USA and I didn't get the full "black treatment", but I think I got to see the curtain pulled aside just a crack. One thing that really struck me was how incredulous non-blacks were when I related my story years later.
fuckpig 13y ago
> White America welcome to black America. Try living in a minority majority area. Most of your cops are non-white too. If you get your fingers broken, it's likely an Indian or Hispanic cop with a grudge. The media hasn't caught up to that yet, but when do they ever?
aestra 13y ago
A (black) friend told me this story. Many many years ago, him and his friends (a bunch of black teenage boys) went to Walmart. Two of his friends stole a couple of packs of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. They got caught, and the police were called and serious criminal charges were brought against them. My friend wasn't charged as he didn't do anything wrong, but signed a paper saying he wouldn't go into Walmart ever again. They did shoplift and commit a crime, but I can't help but think if it was some middle class white kids taking Yu-Gi-Oh! cards they would have just called their parents to come pick them up.

by yardie 13y ago

adsenseclient 13y ago

Third world countries have third world police for a reason: out of necessity.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Jun8 13y ago

It seems you have been the victim of a similarly unjust arrest, but frankly I can't see how you "already knew where this was headed" after the first paragraph. Given the photo at the top, at first glance I assumed that the woman at the lectern was the OP, only towards the end of the story did I get understand that the OP was a man. I cannot see any reference to the OP being black in the text (his About thumbnail is too small to see clearly).

Gracana 13y ago
yardie isn't saying the author was black. They're saying that this is the typical experience of black people's interactions with police in the united states. Whereas the author is surprised at being treated this way, many people learn to expect it.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

pessimizer 13y ago

As a black programmer, I remember the cliche about problems and regular expressions in my head as "regular expressions are like calling the cops." That's unfair to regular expressions, though, because I actually have seen them solve a problem before. Cops improving a situation? Never seen it.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
RMacy 13y ago
Cops are in a weird place. People don't like them until they need them. I work with a lot of cops and most of them are good (and yes they can occasionally get overreaching) but that generalization widens the divide between on-duty police officers and civilians. I would say if we treated them like I get treated being part time Military (hand shaken, dinners, etc) that they will be better people. You'll also see less of this. Humans like positive situations, they like being praised, they like feeling loved and needed. They will defend the things they hold dear.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure we all know or have known cops. The ones I've known definitely love praise. They seem upset and angry that people aren't praising them constantly, in my experience. Very high opinions of themselves. </(probably) unfair stereotype and generalization>
- jcc80 13y ago
  Hero worship is not the answer and may actually contribute to the problem. The solution is basic accountability ie police do not investigate themselves and a change of culture from "war on crime" to community policing. As someone else commented here, the police training actually turns well meaning future officers against the average citizen. An example re: accountability is the California city that significantly reduced complaints by requiring officers to wear cameras. Small sample size but encouraging. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/wearable-video-cameras-for-police-officers.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/wearable-video-ca...

nutate 13y ago

As a white person thrown into psychiatric solitary a couple times, I'd say that he got pretty cushy treatment compared to what black folks get. No trial, out in 12 hours? Try that if you're black. Sounds crazy, but considering how many questions he was asking the officers after they'd cuffed him he got off quite easy. I wonder if my friends that went to UCSF around the same time as him knew him. I know a lot of folks like him, but they don't know much standard "know your rights" type stuff that teaches you to do nothing, say nothing once you are cuffed. Unless you are making them laugh, you're probably on their bad side.

yardie 13y ago
I've spent an entire weekend in holding for resisting arrest. There is no food and nowhere to sleep in holding. On Monday, when I finally met the magistrate, all charges were dropped because nothing happened. When I tell my white friends this story they logically conclude I must have done something, police don't simply "detain" you without cause. Yes, they do. My other friends are much more understanding. Either it has happened to them or someone they know.
- nutate 13y ago
  Uhh... dude that was your fault for getting arrested on a weekend. Duh... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment are really important subjects for people who want to understand their freedoms. If you are a danger to yourself, others or gravely disabled you may be taken into a hospital and honestly you should be. If you are arrested, you might be held for up to 72 hours in the US. I think there are a lot of really good reasons for those laws honestly, but they can trip up people who are focusing on broad constitutional aphorisms instead of real state and local policy.
  - yardie 13y ago
    Well, goddamn me for being "a black male, between 5 and 6 feet."

incision 13y ago

>"White America welcome to black America." Pretty much. I was honestly dumbstruck by the naiveté expressed as soon as the action starts. "She turned to me and abruptly said that I was not needed as a witness and should leave immediately. I told her we were headed home, just across the way, when my friend and I encountered the accident; and that I’d recently broken my elbow in a similar bike accident here and deeply cared about the outcome." It's an odd mixture of feelings to read about someone who lives in the same country I do who was able to grow into adulthood without having to learn the basic rules some of us had to learn by 4th grade.

AngrySkillzz 13y ago
Basic rules like "have no compassion" and "respect people with guns?"
- beat 13y ago
  Respect != fear. Watching your mouth because you fear the authorities with guns is quite the opposite of respect.
- moheeb 13y ago
  No...more like "leave when the cops show up". What is some drunk yahoo gonna do to help after the call has been made? I'm sure the cops have all kinds of anecdotes about how helpful the drunks loitering around a scene at 1AM are!
  - late2part 13y ago
    I don't believe the police have any right to give a lawful order to compel a citizen from leaving a public area unless there is a public disturbance or danger. The samaritan, according to her own story, was not creating a problem. 3 drinks in 3 hours makes few people intoxicated. The people have a right, nay, an obligation, to resist unlawful orders. If her story is true and accurate, that law enforcement officer and the jailors with poor behaviors need to be fired, arrested, and prosecuted. I don't care what bad examples "cop logic" can use to justify their immoral and prejudicial thoughts. This story is a travesty and LE's actions reprehensible.

mdisraeli 13y ago

I'm glad it wasn't just me who felt like that. I'm white, middle class, and grew up in Britain as a native. But as a member of multiple minority groups, I've seen hints of this world, and it is not pretty :( The worst part of all this? First thing I did was check the author's gender and skin colour. And then I read the article. I normally work hard to be free of the prejudice of this society we are forced to live in, and yet I realised I took this article more seriously because it was by a white male :( That is why it is vital to understand privilege, and that we live in a society that is constantly pushing its values that we cannot help but to make such mistakes. That it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, how much of a meritocracy you think your community has, but if it isn't free from the constant pressure of our base society (ie, realistically impossible), you'll end reading something like this and trying to excuse away those thoughts I just admitted.

Crake 13y ago
Just because you are prejudiced in favor of white people doesn't mean every other white person alive is also a racist.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  There are shades of racism. At the extreme racist end, there are those who genuinely and explicitly believe that dark skin makes you a worthless scum. At the other end, there are people who feel, at a gut level, that skin colour is irrelevant. Between the two, there are people who will infer various things from skin colour, such as the propensity to crime, IQ, or whatever. The sad fact is, a correct assessment of reality is racist to some extent. Not because of skin colour, mind you, but because of confounding factors such as income, or self-fulfilling prophecies such as racism itself. Correlation is not causation, but the correlation is still there, and we can still draw inferences from them. As for my personal assessment of the credibility of this story, I assumed the guy was white to begin with. If I believed he was black, I would have been like "of course", and marked off the story as even more credible. Because I have this stereotype in my head about police being racist. I'm now wondering to what extent this is actually true…
- 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago

I was thinking similar. If police will crap on someone like this when they misperceive that they're wealthy and can afford a lawyer (wannabe billionaire) imagine what they do to people who can't defend themselves. It's a very sickening abuse of power. Perhaps the one good piece of the story is that it gets the word out.

gumballhead 13y ago

So awesome and true. There is no situation the police can't make worse.

dopamean 13y ago

Off topic: are you Jamaican? (I ask because of the username).

yardie 13y ago
You guessed correct!
- dopamean 13y ago
  Excellent. I was born in Kingston. Grew up in the States though.
  - yardie 13y ago
    Girls town. Grew up in Miami.

cleaver 13y ago

I gained a perspective that is a bit more in depth than the typical white guy. I went to university in a town in Canada where the police seemed to be very interested in guys with long hair. I had long hair. As a result, I got stopped, intimidated and threatened by the police. I was never arrested. No doubt I would have had it worse if I was black. A few years later I moved to Toronto. I still had long hair, but the police seemed to ignore me. I was really curious and paid extra attention to the police. It took a while, but it finally hit me: "they're only interested in the black guys!" The black guys were being watched with the same sort of intensity that I had experienced. I didn't observe the same sort of interactions I had, but I could imagine. Canada is a bit different from the USA and I didn't get the full "black treatment", but I think I got to see the curtain pulled aside just a crack. One thing that really struck me was how incredulous non-blacks were when I related my story years later.

fuckpig 13y ago

> White America welcome to black America. Try living in a minority majority area. Most of your cops are non-white too. If you get your fingers broken, it's likely an Indian or Hispanic cop with a grudge. The media hasn't caught up to that yet, but when do they ever?

aestra 13y ago

A (black) friend told me this story. Many many years ago, him and his friends (a bunch of black teenage boys) went to Walmart. Two of his friends stole a couple of packs of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. They got caught, and the police were called and serious criminal charges were brought against them. My friend wasn't charged as he didn't do anything wrong, but signed a paper saying he wouldn't go into Walmart ever again. They did shoplift and commit a crime, but I can't help but think if it was some middle class white kids taking Yu-Gi-Oh! cards they would have just called their parents to come pick them up.