Listening to Bikram Yoga While Black

[Thermal]

Again, a fair point. I don't mind demonstrating my innocence when I do look suspicious to a reasonable person. For instance, my work has me on empty properties at odd times. I get that I could plausibly look like a prowler, so no issues. Were I to be parked on a public street, waiting to meet someone or just making a phone call, I would feel a little persecuted to be interrogated. More than a little.

 

[ddt]

They should respond, if for nothing else than to cite her. If she told the truth during the call, they should have just hung up. If she lied or grossly exaggerated, charge her accordingly on the spot.

I think it is generally considered a bad idea to foster in a population a hesitance to contact authorities due to a fear of becoming a target of those authorities themselves. No?

With many of these "Xing while black" threads, I shake my head and think: how did the 911 operator even dispatch this call? In my country (Netherlands), the operator would refuse to do so and admonish me not to abuse the service.

Of course there are gray cases, and you should give people the benefit of the doubt. But let's do a hypothetical 911 call in this case:

Racist Woman: There's a man threatening my neighbors!
911 operator: What's he doing?
RW: He's assaulting them!
911: How? Does he have a gun?
RW: Yes, he points a gun at them!

And then the police arrives, and sees that the man had no gun, establishes that she never saw a gun, but saw him handing out business cards. I think every reasonable person can see the stark contrast between "pointing a gun" and "handing out business cards" and that the former was a pernicious lie. So yes, in this case I think it would be justified to bring the caller down to the station for filing a false report (if the call went like the above).

 

[Mumbles]

With many of these "Xing while black" threads, I shake my head and think: how did the 911 operator even dispatch this call? In my country (Netherlands), the operator would refuse to do so and admonish me not to abuse the service.

They're often legally required to add it to their queue as a low priority. This is why it sometimes (eg. BBQ Becky) take hours to get a response.

OTOH, as quite a few recent incidents have shown, it's reasonable to assume that these people are knowingly using police as their legal attack force to remove black (and other nonwhite) people that they're angry about being around for no good reason.

(Racism is not a good reason, although it's usually the obvious one)

ETA: It's true that, while false 911 calls are generally outlawed, this can be difficult to prove. Doesn't mean prosecutors can't drag these people in front of a jury anyway. On one hand, this already occurs to black/Latinx/Native American people for trivial matters, but OTOH, this would be another avenue for doing this for legitimate 911 calls that they simply fail to show up for for days.

 

[Garrison]

OTOH, as quite a few recent incidents have shown, it's reasonable to assume that these people are knowingly using police as their legal attack force to remove black (and other nonwhite) people that they're angry about being around for no good reason.

Which makes sense from their perspective. If you were a black man in these circumstances you might well conclude that waiting and explaining things to the cops is a high risk strategy, no one wants to be the 'star' of the next police brutality story. In that case the complainer gets what they want regardless of how the police respond. On the other hand the person making the call may have seen some of those videos of police misconduct and be hoping to get the kind of cop responding to the call who goes for their nightstick/gun without stopping to ask any awkward questions.

 

[ddt]

They're often legally required to add it to their queue as a low priority. This is why it sometimes (eg. BBQ Becky) take hours to get a response.

That legal requirement baffles me. Can't the 911 operator ask a bit more details to tease out the idiocy? I mean, if the 911 operator in this case had asked and the woman had truthfully said that yoga-man had "assaulted" neighbors with business cards, it would have been clear that there's a bogus call. If she'd invented some kind of weapon, she'd had obviously made a false report.

OTOH, as quite a few recent incidents have shown, it's reasonable to assume that these people are knowingly using police as their legal attack force to remove black (and other nonwhite) people that they're angry about being around for no good reason.

(Racism is not a good reason, although it's usually the obvious one)

Absolutely. What Garrison said.

ETA: It's true that, while false 911 calls are generally outlawed, this can be difficult to prove. Doesn't mean prosecutors can't drag these people in front of a jury anyway.

Dragging them off to the police station and putting them in jail for a few hours while processing the arrest paperwork will likely already send the message, I presume.

On one hand, this already occurs to black/Latinx/Native American people for trivial matters, but OTOH, this would be another avenue for doing this for legitimate 911 calls that they simply fail to show up for for days.

I'm confused what you mean here.