Seems like family wanted GoFundMe page stopped because they did not want to appear they were soliciting money for their bad experience. Good for them.
There’s something wrong when it is so easy for someone to call out the police on anyone they think “looks creepy,” and police are required to come and question them and treat them with suspicion. What evidence did the police have that the woman wasn’t completely crazy? None. In fact, even taking every single thing she said as true, there still was not enough evidence to justify their responding to her call. I can’t believe the campus police would have pulled the students out of the tour if they’d just been walking past the tour group and noticed the two boys there, so why does the fact that some completely unqualified person made their own judgment call about those boys change the scenario?
We can try to train police forces not to profile people, but that won’t do any good if there are rules that require police to treat every stupid, unfounded accusation as something they are required to investigate.
Problem is…when someone does turn out to be a bad guy, the media crucifies the police for not doing anything. Still they should have talked to the mother at length first.
@sylvan8798 Yes, I do think she needs to suffer whatever consequences occur. Only when there are consequences will things change. I am so horrified that this can still actually happen.
It happens all the time to many people of all races - unfounded accusations.
Law enforcement officers almost always have discretion, including whether, when, and how to respond to calls. They should have exercised some in this situation.
I think the point is, what exactly were the accusations? Not one thing said was something illegal that needed police intervention. It also didn’t even rise to being suspicious activity. If the police investigated every call they got, we would need MANY more officers. Ask one. Some may be surprised at just how many calls they resolve WITHOUT in person intervention.
I used to think there was nothing wrong with police searching someone “just because.” The “there is nothing to be afraid of if you did nothing wrong” mentality. I now know better, much better, and hope this woman (and others) has learned a very valuable lesson.
Actually they don’t, if a 911 call comes in they must respond to it.
Was this a 911 call or a call to campus security?
In my community (and probably most big cities), there are so many 911 calls that law enforcement has to at least do triage to decide which to respond to most quickly.
University police, which is the police for that jurisdiction.
Media accounts referred to it as a 911 call.
I learned that in NYC, a 911 call for a traffic accident RARELY gets a response. This was after waiting over an hour and even stopping a passing patrol car whose response was “this is not our area of coverage” before driving away.
that is NYC…
…which is an example of how all 911 calls are not personally responded to.
I can’t imagine the woman would have known how to contact campus security directly (unless she picked up one of the blue light phones) so it seems logical to assume she actually dialed 911.
Fort Collins is not NYC…they can and do respond to all 911 calls.
People who engage in public displays of racism should be prepared for the public shaming that comes their way as a result. Hopefully a lot of folks with racist tendencies will learn to keep their bigotry to themselves as a result of this incident, for fear of provoking the same negative attention that this woman did. That’s the only silver lining I see here, the “teachable moment.”
Almost everything you ever wanted to know about the Fort Collins Police Department policies and procedures (except those things that aren’t written down): https://www.fcgov.com/police/pdf/policy_manual.pdf
Good for Fort Collins? Sorry I didn’t see you specify a specific police department.