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Globe columnist stopped during manhunt for Neponset Circle hit-run suspects
By adamg on Sat, 03/31/2012 - 12:47pm
Adrian Walker reports on being stopped by a cop Thursday afternoon while he walked down Tremont Street by the Suffolk Law School, and what that's like in this post-Trayvon Martin world:
Of course, I was never in any danger. But that didn't make it feel any better to get stopped for fitting our culture’s all-purpose description of a suspect: a black man.
Being a Globe columnist, of course, when he contacted BPD to find out what's up, the second in command of the whole department returned his call. Walker reports that Daniel Linskey told him police had tracked a cell phone signal to the area of Tremont Street.
What Walker didn't print, however, was that that information proved to be accurate, that police had reason to be searching for the suspect along Tremont Street - they found him around 2 p.m. at at the Saint Francis House on Boylston Street, a short walk from where Walker was stopped.
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Comments
Middle-age profiling?
I don't want to make light of racial profiling; it exists, and is a real problem which needs to be addressed in our society. However, from Walker's account, that's not what happened to him; he actually matched a description of the suspect. If he'd observed that same cop asking for IDs from every black male that passed his van, there would be a story here. If there was some indication that the description of the suspect was fictitious, there would be a story here. But the cop was looking for a guy who, at least on paper, looked enough like Walker and was believed to be (and it would turn out was indeed) in the area. Walker probably has better anecdotes about being stopped than this one...
Martin was followed simply because he was a young black kid. When discussing racial profiling we should actually discuss racial profiling, not every unfortunate situation when an innocent person reasonably matching a description is stopped by the police.
"post Trayvon Martin world"?
Great, so now we have a new catch-phrase for everyone to get sick of, like "post 9-11", which makes me want to punch whoever says it.
I hate to break it to the Adrian Walkers of the world, but...everything that happens to you doesn't happen to you because of your skin color. A black guy at a party in JP was telling people how angry it makes him when he's walking down the street at night and "women walking towards me on the sidewalk cross to the other side of the street, because I'm black."
The half a dozen white men within earshot rolled their eyes and informed him that women do exactly the same thing when they're walking down the street.
Trayvon Martin wasn't shot because he was black. He was shot because he was a bully and a thug. He was shot because he chased down, confronted, and started beating someone substantially smaller than him.
Trayvon Martin wasn't shot
What the Fraggle Rock are you talking about?
Cripes
And 4 Herald expatriates...
... have uprated this POS lying troll comment.
Cripes, indeed!
Just the same Anon 15 times
Seems these KKKLanish trolls have a whole lot of time on their hands.
Wait a second...
You know that Trayvon Martin was the smaller kid who got chased down not the half-white, half-Hispanic bigger guy doing the chasing and confronting, right?
Alright!
I guess the case is closed - now that all the facts are known - right?
so
Are you going to tell your kids that if Porky Perv is stalking them, they shouldn't run? If Porky Perv attacks them, they shouldn't fight?
If I'm Porky Perv, I want to know where you live so I can find the kids who have been told to give it up to the nice stalker!
So I guess cops aren't
So I guess cops aren't allowed to stop anyone that looks like anyone anymore and will have to stop to question 95 year old Asian grandmothers during manhunts for some 20 something white oxy addicts to avoid the appearance of "profiling" huh?
This is the same politically correct stupidity which has made airport security a joke.
I'm sorry young black men are always feeling upset about being disproportionally stopped as potential suspects by the police. But the sad fact is crime is being disproportionally committed by young black men between the ages of 15-25. I'm sure if most crime was being committed disproportionally by middle aged white guys, every middle aged white guy would be complaining about disproportionally being stopped as a potential suspect by the police too.
This seems like a case of
This seems like a case of "stopped for fitting the description." The cops had a specific description of a specific person they were looking for, in this case one of those aspects was that he was black. That's a completely different situation IMO from racial profiling, like the stop and frisk policy that the NYPD has where they just stop random people of color and jack them up hoping to find warrants or a joint or something. It's also different from the Trayvon Martin case where the ONLY thing that made him suspicious was that he was a black boy walking the streets at night. The cops had a specific description of a black guy and a proximate area to look in.
Wasent this reporter arrested
Wasent this reporter arrested for a DUI?
Walker was stopped by a cop
Adrian Walker was stopped by a police officer, Trayvon was harassed and killed by a vigilante. There is a big difference. The officer is trained and was acting in response to a very specific incident, a description of the suspect, and information about his whereabouts. George Zimmerman is not a cop, acted in direct contradiction to the police by getting out of his car, and had no information of any kind about any incident or suspect.
bad analogy
This column is a horrible one if the goal is to describe profiling.
1. Walker was about ONE block from where the suspect was arrested, and they had tracked a cell phone to Tremont St.
2. The description of the suspect that I heard while the manhunt was going on was, "State police described one of the suspects as a black man with dreadlocks, 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighing 280 pounds".
Sorry Adrian. You were not stopped for being black. You were stopped as a middle age black guy, dreadlocks, larger framed, and within a block or two from where the cell phone had been tracked.
I do not want to make light of real racial profiling, but this does not seem like it.
profiling
i was a white kid growing up in boston and i cant tell you how many times i was stopped and searched becuase i "fit a description." i was usually lucky enough to be a "young white male wearing baseball cap." i was once ripped out of my car and made to lay face down with a gun to my head because my car and my red sox cap fit the description of an armed robbery that had taken place nearby. after a few tense minutes, they apologized, told me i was the wrong guy, and sent on my way.when i was 13 i was stopped, along with some friends, and had my hands inspected for cuts and blood because a homeless guy was badly beaten a block away.another time i was made to kneel in snow (in 10 degree weather) for 40 minutes by BC police because a girl was assaulted on campus and we were lucky enough to be the only non students headed off campus at the time. on our knees shivering until the girl was driven by and told the BC cop we were not the perps, it was kids she knew to be students on campus.once i spent 3 hours in jail because someone with the same name and description of me had been seen breaking into houses. they screamed at me and called me a liar for three hours WHILE MY OWN FRIENDS went and got the real perp and handed him over to the police.
it may happen to black kids/guys more but i guess it depends on the neighborhood and timing.