Minority Students Upset by Police’s Racial Suspect Descriptions

Black student groups at the University of Minnesota want the campus police to stop using racial suspect descriptions in their campus crime alerts. A group (including  members from the African American and African Studies department, Black Faculty and Staff Association, Black Graduate and Professional Student Association, Black Men’s Forum, Black Student Union and Huntley House for African American Males) sent a joint letter in December to complain.

On a panel to discuss the complaint further, Ian Taylor Jr., president of the Black Men’s Forum, said the major problem was “the repeated black, black, black suspect. And what that does, it really discomforts the mental and physical comfort for students on campus because they feel like suspicions begin to increase.”

Police defended themselves with the extremely reasonable assertion that they were giving all the information in the suspect descriptions that they had available. In other words, they really can’t be blamed if the majority of the suspects happen to be black.

Furthermore, I find it ridiculous that this group of organizations, all of whom have descriptors like “black” or “African-American” in their names, should be contesting the use of “black” in suspect descriptions. What these groups are basically saying is, “By all means use black when you are describing something positive. But if you are describing something negative, you need to leave black out of it.”

I don’t want to discomfort anyone’s comfort, but I hope the police stand firm on this one. And it’s not because I have anything against blackness. I have more of a problem with suspectness. If the police cave on this one, it will open the door for any number of politically correct ommissions. “You can’t say the suspect had a stutter; that’s unfair to people with speech impediments. You can’t say he wore a Lakers jacket; that’s defamation of the Lakers organization. You can’t say he had a tear drop tattoo under his left eye; that increases suspicion about the good community of people with tattoos. You can’t say the suspect was female; that’s sexist.” I’m pretty sure the only descriptive adjectives that will still be allowed in suspect descriptions will be “white” and “male.” No one will complain about those, I am sure.

30 responses

  1. My assumption is probably wrong but it must work both ways. If a white person commits a crime we can’t tell the police what color he is either. “Yes officer I was assaulted by a person of unknown color, indeterminate size, weight and sex. I have no idea what color or type of clothing or shoes he, she or it was wearing and I don’t know the color or texture of the hair. Now pick up the pace and catch the assaulter.” Yep, it’s going to work out just fine… for the criminals.

  2. They are not African Americans. they nor their parents or grandparents were born in Africa, so how can they be called African. The right word is Black American.

    • The term “African-American” is just another political term dreamed up by the bureaucrats. It is just as much nonsense as my being called “European American” because my great-great-grandparents were born in Europe.

  3. Just ridiculous. Some police departments already do this by not describing flash mob thieves except to call them teens, when they are in fact black. They don’t describe black suspects who play the knockout game either and they don’t call it a hate crime. But let a white suspect do the same thing and the DOJ files charges as a hate crime. I think there’s a problem there already. Do the crime and suffer the consequences including the complete description of the suspect or suspects. You don’t like it, tough.

    • Read the good book WHITE GIRL BLEED A LOT for an analysis of the Black-on-White crime that goes virtually unreported and ignored.

  4. By all means describe the perp the best way you can if they are Black say so if white say so if spanish say so. How else would you describe anyone unless you use color if available?

    • From your other posts I’d say you would just up and lock away anyone of color. No weight will be given to your thoughts.

      • They do not need weight. They speak for themselves. Just out of curiosity how would you describe someone without using color? And for arguments sake Black is the absence of color.

        • They sure do speak for themselves sodomite. You admitted to sodomy in another thread yet you come here and judge others? Sad really.

  5. Any news story about a crime where the perp(s) are not described in any “practical” way, and read by a person capable of reading between the lines, is going to assume the suspects are black anyway.

  6. First they continuously change their descriptions of blacks – so easy peasy, refer to all blacks as purples

  7. With this article I have one very large problem. This is an American institution of higher learning. Every member on that complaint list said the same thing or in part the same thing that they were either African, Or Black at the start of their description of themselves. Why should that bother me, it should bother every American no matter what your color or your origin because it openly supersedes that we are all Americans. Why cannot these groups say that they are Americans of African heritage, they are Americans of color or any other type of hyphenated American.

    If these individuals cannot put American first and believe that they are Americans then they should go back to wherever they think they came from. As Americans they have certain rights and liberties but if they’re not Americans they do not have those rights and they should not be given those rights.

    As an ex-deputy Sheriff and if you ask any other law enforcement officer when you describe an individual as a suspect you must put down as much detail as possible. If that person is black what you want them to say the perpetrator is chocolate colored. There’s nothing wrong with saying the suspect is a white male wearing a red T-shirt, blue pants and ladies high heel shoes. If the man was black you say the same thing because is not white because is not yellow because is not purple you have to describe the person you’re looking for.

    For educated individuals this whole thing is extremely stupid you see an American of African heritage jumping through a window and machine-gunning 35 nuns who went to the Jewish bar mitzvah of the parish priest for you going to say this guy jump to the window and killed a bunch of people yet right. I think this is the most ludicrous example I can think of but it’s almost as smart as this post that you can’t call a black person black why

    • Why? Maybe they are not proud that they are black. During the 1970’s, someone came up with the expression, ‘black is beautiful’ and they seemed to like that.

      • That’s absolutely no justifiable reason at all. Not until everyone who is an American acknowledges that fact above and before anything else. My ancestry goes back roughly 9 generations to Scotland. However I am not a Scott-American in reality never would want to be. My heritage and my clan are important to me but there only secondary. If someone is black that’s not a problem it becomes a problem when they put the hyphen in there I think it’s grand that someone is an American of African dissent or even an American of black heritage.

        The police have to use descriptive words to tell people who to look for and what the criminal looks like. That’s common sense and these idiots who seem to want to put Africa and the color black before being an American or even a human being there’s something wrong with them. You see a crime is committed by a Caucasian/white person what are the police going to say? That the criminal running away is a vanilla person wearing a chocolate sweatshirt. It’s the same thing if you see a criminal who committed a crime running away in that individual happens to be an American of African dissent what are you going to say the criminals running away he sort of chocolate wearing a red sweatshirt? For educated people there make it total butt heads out of themselves just to get their 15 minutes of fame and the cause as much grief as possible. They want to play that game United States government should give them off first-class tickets one way back to Africa revoke the citizenship and put them on every no-fly list known to man.

  8. There has been a major increase in crime on the Minneapolis campus of the U of MN. Rape, assaults and theft are numerous. No substantial progress can be made until the blacks do something to stop this mau mau behavior of their young people. Quit the moaning and help find the solution. Encouraging Dr. Ben Carson to run for POTUS would be a start.

    • Yes, another reason why U of MN should allow concealed carry. And just how did those Black thugs get into the university in the first place? Or did they come from the Black slums?

  9. Were I black, maybe I would also be embarrassed my my associates’ criminal behavior. They are like cats: they want to cover their turds with sand.

  10. More reverse discrimination and excuse-making. If the Blacks don’t want to be described as such by the police, then why do they engage in crime?

  11. The insanity grows. If the suspect is black, should he be described as non-white, non-Asian, and non-Native American?

Leave a Reply