<story><title>I fit the description…</title><url>http://artandeverythingafter.com/i-fit-the-description/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>delinka</author><text>I understand the reason for fear in the current law enforcement climate in the US. But this quote really misses something:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...they didn’t believe that I wasn’t a criminal.  They had to find out.  My word was not enough for them. My ID was not enough for them.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Well ... no. If you are indeed close to the given description of a criminal complaint, they&amp;#x27;re going to check. The have to check. If they&amp;#x27;d come across the actual criminal and he&amp;#x27;d behaved similarly (and lying by producing plausible ID, acceptable home address, etc) and then let the actual criminal go, that&amp;#x27;d be terrible.&lt;p&gt;Now, the situation could indeed have been improved by the cops: the &amp;#x27;suspect&amp;#x27; made no threatening moves, NO need to reach for a gun; simply act like a reasonable human being having a conversation; call for another officer with the same (similar?) ethnicity...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>Indeed. The only thing in this story that really disturbed me is that the officer apparently went for his gun immediately. This whole situation could, and should, go in a friendly manner, &amp;quot;like a reasonable human being having a conversation&amp;quot;. The US really needs to work on reducing the amount of fear in the society - among both general population and law enforcement officers.</text></comment>
<story><title>I fit the description…</title><url>http://artandeverythingafter.com/i-fit-the-description/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>delinka</author><text>I understand the reason for fear in the current law enforcement climate in the US. But this quote really misses something:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...they didn’t believe that I wasn’t a criminal.  They had to find out.  My word was not enough for them. My ID was not enough for them.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Well ... no. If you are indeed close to the given description of a criminal complaint, they&amp;#x27;re going to check. The have to check. If they&amp;#x27;d come across the actual criminal and he&amp;#x27;d behaved similarly (and lying by producing plausible ID, acceptable home address, etc) and then let the actual criminal go, that&amp;#x27;d be terrible.&lt;p&gt;Now, the situation could indeed have been improved by the cops: the &amp;#x27;suspect&amp;#x27; made no threatening moves, NO need to reach for a gun; simply act like a reasonable human being having a conversation; call for another officer with the same (similar?) ethnicity...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cmiles74</author><text>Eyewitness identification is known to be extraordinarily weak, yet in this case police officers were letting that decide if this man should be taken in. Even worse, we know that cross-racial identifications are often more inaccurate than the already poor identifications of people we don&amp;#x27;t know.[0]&lt;p&gt;No, I do not believe that the police are picking everyone &amp;quot;close to the given description of a criminal complaint&amp;quot;. Perhaps they were trying to pick up everyone close to the description in _this_ criminal complaint.&lt;p&gt;IMHO, this is simply an excuse to pursue racial profiling. In this story, the police readily admitted that he didn&amp;#x27;t match the description (he was heavier) but they didn&amp;#x27;t really notice until after the fact and this didn&amp;#x27;t prompt them to let him go. Then what was the point of detaining him? Clearly for show, everyone in the area was reminded of how active the police were. Again, in my opinion, I suspect that the way people felt about said activity would likely break along racial lines.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;heinonline.org&amp;#x2F;HOL&amp;#x2F;LandingPage?handle=hein.journals&amp;#x2F;ajcl28&amp;amp;div=15&amp;amp;id=&amp;amp;page=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;heinonline.org&amp;#x2F;HOL&amp;#x2F;LandingPage?handle=hein.journals&amp;#x2F;a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>