@Midwest67 I was referring to the woman who bypassed several others in order to ask me for directions. It was the middle of the afternoon on a popular street.
Way back in the day I used to ride my bicycle to the train station in suburban New Jersey and lock my bike and take the train to work. One evening I came home to find a second lock on my bike. (Not sure if it was just an act of vandalism or the plan was to come back at night and steal my bike) I was wearing a business suit. I flagged down a local cop and explained my predicament. He opened the trunk of his cop car, pulled out a big bolt cutter, and cut the offending lock off of my bicycle, pretty much no questions asked. How’s that for “privilege” ?
" Could this have gone differently if I was a POC? Potentially but we will never know. What I do know is this guard’s response had nothing to do with race but was due to fear (or something similar)."
In the case here at Yale, what’s to fear about a person sleeping.
Per his usual handling of these events, Trevor Noah had a funny but pithy take on that very thing tonight:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/vvnl31/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-a-black-yale-student-is-reported-to-the-police-for-napping
Some of these encounters with police could involve “privilege.” But some also involve luck of the draw, who responds to a call , their common sense , willingness to give a warning rather than ticket you, etc. We probably all have anecdotes. Most police do a good job. The Yale police had both white and black officer response to this incident. It is unfortunate they had to waste their time in responding to a bogus complaint. And the woman who was questioned had every right to question why she was being harassed for napping in her own common room. When someone calls the cops though , they have to check things out.
They still need a reasonable basis for suspicion. “Sleeping in a common room” in a dorm is not suspicious behavior – the student explained that she lived there-they knew her room number and she showed them her key. At that point there was no basis for the detention that took place becaue of the police holding on to her ID. She would have been well within her rights to simply refuse their request for ID and shut her apartment door.
I’m aware of my not-suspiciousness all the time but acutely so this week. (I’m in one of the very whitest states in the country at the moment). I hopped the wall of a (seasonally closed) state park to hike the other day. In fact I’ve hiked trails that go right by/behind private houses this week, knowing my presence is unlikely to elicit a police call. I’ve bopped in and out of little country stores and picked things up and looked at them but not bought anything. And so on.
Agree with Calmom and others. This woman fell asleep working on a paper which meant she likely had at least a laptop next to her. She unlocked her apartment. There is no reasonable basis for suspicion that she does not belong there. The police likely had to show up due to the call, but should have left immediately after she opened her apartment and certainly after she showed her ID. Did they really think she had stolen the key, set up the area with a laptop and had a fake ID made all to sleep in the common room? Just so sad and ridiculous.
I don’t understand why so many people are so fearful of people that look different from them.
I worry for our society - people call the police for so many things that are none of their business. Whether its children walking home from school without an adult or a POC sleeping in a common room, these busybodies really need to back off.
IMHO, there should be repercussions for the person that called the police in these instances. Maybe then people would think twice about whether there is really something dangerous occurring.
Unless a person knows he or she is calling the police for no good reason or is filing a false police report, there should be no repercussions for calling the police if a person is suspicious that a crime could be in progress. Recall that in the San Bernardino mass killing, neighbors had seen suspicious activities going on in the killers’ garage but were afraid to call police for fear of being called anti-Muslim.
A friend tells this story: It was summer, windows were open at night for fresh air. She hears screaming and cries coming from the home behind hers. She calls the police who go to the house. Turns out her neighbor was having ‘rough sex’ with her boyfriend, with consent.
@TatinG Finally a story with a happy ending.
@TatinG Good points but I don’t think the person calling the police in these instances “knew” they were calling for no good reason. The standard should be whether a reasonable person would consider the activity suspicious.
Would a reasonable person consider sleeping in a common room or joining a college tour suspicious?
A couple of years ago in a similar situation, I was the caller. My block runs perpendicular to my neighborhood’s “Main Street” and there is a restaurant with a bar that sometimes has outdoor events in the summer months. It’s not a big deal, but sometimes it’s loud. One night I heard some screaming than went on for a while (I couldn’t see what was going on because the roof of my front porch blocks my view of the street from my bedroom).It wasn’t the usual rowdiness of a Saturday night, I was alone in the house and for whatever reason, I felt wrong about it so I called the police. They came immediately. Turned out that it was a middle-aged (black) man from the neighborhood who had gotten into an altercation with some college kids who had been at the restaurant. They beat him up, smashed his cell phone, and ran over his foot, breaking it in multiple places. I was the only one who called. We live in a diverse neighborhood, so the sight of a black person wouldn’t ever be an issue. But the screaming sounded like something and it was. In my mind, if there was screaming or sounds of distress, it’s better to call than ignore. What if that man had been left to lay there all night because, again, I was the only one who called.
About the Yale incident, I read somewhere that the police “chastised” the woman who had called. They didn’t offer more details though, or body cam video. That would be satisfying to see.
@calmom says
She would NOT have been within her rights. Yale is a private university. The police called were campus police, who are the same as “regular” police at Yale. (They respond when you call 911 on campus.) Yale has every right to have ask students, faculty, staff and anyone else on campus to produce a Yale ID to establish his or her status. (Note that the campus police didn’t just ask for ID; they asked for Yale ID. ) This did NOT take place in some off-campus apartment building; it took place in a grad school dorm. I assume that use of the common rooms in that dorm is limited to Yale grad students, and so the Yale police were acting appropriately in asking her for ID to establish that she was a Yale grad student. Having some familiarity with Yale, I am confident that the police officers would have asked for ID from a white student who was the subject of a complaint.
Moreover, while calling the police was ridiculous, the circumstances were a bit different than the description in this thread. The victim did NOT just fall asleep while working. She took a planned nap. She was sleeping on a couch with pillows and a blanket and she had turned off the lights in the room.
Moreover, the first video makes it clear that the caller didn’t call because she thought the victim was an intruder; many news accounts make it “sound” as if she did. It is obvious from the first video that the caller’s complaint was that the victim was sleeping in the room–NOT that she was an intruder. The caller tells the victim that she “had a perfect right to call the police because you aren’t allowed to sleep in that room.”
While I am sympathetic to the victim and think the caller is seriously messed up, the victim was not within her rights in refusing to show ID that established she wasn’t a trespasser.
The caller may have thought she had a perfect right to call the police, but the police admonished her for making the call and told her this was not a “police matter.”
@sevmom --I agree that EVEN if the caller were right and there is a rule that you can’t sleep in a common room, it would not be a police matter. (I don’t think there is a prohibition against sleeping in a common room.) I’m ONLY saying that the victim did NOT have a right to refuse to show her ID and go into her room, close the door, and ignore the police as @calmom said.
I look at the video each made, and the 2 women seem to a) know each other and b) not like each other. So I would guess there is some history and it is personal in addition to any racism at the Yale dorm.
The Air BNB I see differently. Neighbor is out of town and I know this. People come out with suitcases…hm.
I have done this. My neighbor left town and a rental truck pulled in their drive. I did not see the driver, but I did call police. Turns out it was a rental company picking up a tent from their back yard. And bc this is the burbs where nothing happens, all the cops raced over. (Bc they are bored…)
I’m surprised the neighbor had not seen them before the were leaving. With 4 women, I’d probably just go speak to them myself to see what was going on.
“Graduate students don’t have RA’s.”
I don’t know if the Yale building in question has RAs, but some graduate dorms do. Harvard Law has them, for instance.
I saw more about the Rialto AirBnb situation on TV last night. The cops acted appropriately and the chief of police said that the neighbor who called them acted appropriately. The situation was stirred up by Bob Marley’s publicity seeking granddaughter (one of the renters).
@jonri But she was working on the paper with her books etc there: Where did you read that she had a pillow and a blanket?? According to WaPO
Therefore, it was pretty obvious she was working a paper and had every right to be in the common room.