http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/10/...ying-300-belt/

In New York City we have a controversial practice by the the Mayor and the police department. Many had tried to stop it because it focuses on mostly minorities between teenage years and mid 20s.

In the above story, it shows how racial profiling can affect innocent young people. I hope the kid wins the lawsuit.

I'm surprised the lawsuit is for "racial profiling" and not "false arrest." If this happens to you here, you sue for false arrest and win.

As long as the cities are strapped for cash. The unspoken quota that is real will create more and more unnecessary arrest. Life to short here in Urbana IL one
of the finest colleges in the world of computation. You will find 1000 feet from the campus a line drawn in the sand called that side of the railroad tracks.
The town were driving while black is and always enforced by the thugs with a gun,

To many of my Black colleagues have been victim to this. To many times the ticket is given for no other reason. Check this out while at Illinois state university Normal IL from 1984 to 1999 there was not one black police officer. Not in anyone's life time will we stop stupidity with a law.

[MODERATED] There are terrorist al-Qaeda sleeper cells just waiting to wake up and we all need to be safe and secure. Liberty is a privilege. I knows cuz duh gubmint sez so. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fjzzgzZJns

[MODERATED]

[MODERATED] And so sad but true what you are saying.

It always astounes me how deep the race/color thing still goes in the USofA. Over here in Europe we also have racists cops and alike but they just hate every race expect for us white people. Also long hairs is also a blind spot for police around here. Guess this novel "The Wave" is just so true. Give some one power and he'll miss use it.

It will simply come down to a judge and/or jury determining exactly how (and who) at the store "determined that the card was fraudulent." Why did they accept it? Did they ask for and verify the customer's identification?

Furthermore: they sold the belt. He didn't steal it. If they had probable cause to believe that the transaction might be fraudulent, they should have called-in a manager and decided, then and there, whether or not to carry out the sale. If they did, "in good faith," do these things, then it's between the customer and his bank ... not something to call the police over.

The police officers, meanwhile, probably did the right thing. Someone is accusing someone else of what appears to be a felony crime. You can detain a person for a reasonable short time e.g. to gather facts from the bank, which they timely did and then released the customer with an apology. So, I would not fault the police department in this case, but I certainly would fault the store. The procedure in this case would not have been to "call the police." Make the sales-decision, then either make the sale or don't, and make sure that you followed the book. If you did all that, "it's just merchandise," and it's insured against loss anyway.

And, probably, "there is more to the story than actually made it into the story." It makes a better, juicier story to "play the race card," but a suspicious and poorly-trained store associate could have (and does) make this kind of a mistake even with white people. It will be a very costly and too-public mistake for the store, but it does sound like someone screwed-up very badly. I'd be having the CEO calling him with a public (and sincere) apology and offering him a $1,000.00 gift-card. To start.

Great replies everyone here.

I do realize that what you say is probably true for where the incident took place, but I also need to point out that in Canada, this is illegal.

zhjim, but more importantly "911InsideJob": language has been used in this thread that 0) does in no way befit a LQ member but more importantly is 1) against the LQ Rules. "911InsideJob": we've been lenient given you chose to return without resolving issues under your previous "Crito" account, but since you have been warned before to to make an effort to fit in and avoid further unpleasantnesses you leave me no other option than to temporarily suspend your account until you signal your adherence to the LQ Rules and without reservations. You will not circumvent this access restriction.


// This thread will be reopened later this day.

I think there are times when the police should be tipped off... this clearly isn't one of them. Utterly absurd.

I think this means they're claiming that they didn't say anything to police. Unless "any action" doesn't include calling the police...

It seems pretty obvious to me that somebody at Barney's screwed-up, in ways that by now are either "lost in time" or that certainly didn't make it to the news-reports. Probably, no one is really telling the truth about an unfortunate incident that's probably now better-off forgotten.

Maybe a clever lawyer can turn this into "racial profiling" but it sounds to me much more like, "somebody screwed-up and since then has been covering their (corporate) a*s." (Of course.) Really, not much of an interesting story. If I were a judge, I'm not sure that I would let it get too far, because (shrug...) it smells like a waste of court-time. There are far more pressing things for a court-of-law to be doing, quite frankly, than this.

And he didn't even keep the belt. Bought it, didn't like it, returned it.

I don't like some of the stuff the cops do but I don't want their job either. They deal with the scum of the scum everyday. They have a very dangerous job. I used to work at a construction company that hired ex cons. Trust me, Thank God for prisons. They need to keep some of those guys in a bit longer.

I know this will get jumped on, but, if statistics show that a specific demographic tend to be the ones perpetrating a particular crime, then surely it makes sense to concentrate investigations etc on that demographic. I don't see how that's prejudicial. If the stats DON'T show it then it is, or if the stats are made up or false.

As a non-controversial example, if a young lady is raped by a white male near my house and the police knocked on the door and asked for my DNA, should I scream about sexism and racism because they didn't ask for my wife's and my black neighbors as well? Or are they just demonstrating a bit of common sense?

If you're checking for people carrying knives to reduce knife crime, do you stop and search old ladies and women with pushchairs? Or do you stop the people who are the most likely to be carrying, i.e. teenage boys?

The whole point about police work is that it a process or working out who is most likley to have done something and then checking.

That's a very big IF.

That the "specific demographic" is actually specific enough to justify that, is an even bigger IF.