@4mykidz I agree with everything you said. My son is very quiet, and very introverted. My son got married last year to his high school sweetheart and I still worry about him. He too wears hoodies, with logos, or odd anime insignia, he is a hard core gamer. He also walks around with his hands in his hoodie.
@4MyKidz Thank you for your explanation and I am sorry that this happens to your son and I 100% agree that he sounds like a terrific young man. I never said racism doesn’t exist and I certainly hope the blind eye reference was directed toward me. I just said I won’t make an absolute judgement.
I have sat on several juries. In a jury trial you are given very specific instructions. You are not to prejudge. You are to look at all of the evidence on both sides of the situation. When one side is presented you start to side with them then the other side gives a counter argument. Then all of a sudden it’s not so black and white. I followed all of the rules given to me but I can also tell you that in each of these experiences, I hated sitting in judgement of someone.
I tend to use my jury experience in regards to all of these news stories.
@Curiosa I didn’t automatically empathize with the lady who called. I said I would not make a judgement as I wasn’t there. I do have a problem with a poster calling her son “too stupid to be accepted to college”
@SwimmingDad why would you say I have an inability to accept racism? Completely untrue. You don’t know me or anything about me. Because I won’t make an absolute statement calling someone a racist means I don’t accept racism? Those are the kind of statements that are not productive in the conversation.
I believe that the majority of people are good people. I believe that the majority of people of people want to end racism. I believe we all have a starting point and an ultimate end point but we often go around opposite sides of the circle trying to get there.
“I never said racism doesn’t exist and I certainly hope the blind eye reference was directed toward me.”
Should have said “was not directed at me”. I’m not a very good proof reader.
@bhs1978 My reference was in general. I’m going to put on my librarian hat for a moment and recommend a book called All American Boys written by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Great book to listen to and definitely fits in this discussion. It is a YA book so has mature themes and adult language. Give it a try 
@4MyKidz Thank you for clarifying. Glad it wasn’t directed at me
I’m certainly not trying to offend anyone. Thanks for the recommendation. I will look into that.
@bhs1978 I appreciate your honesty and willingness to share your perspective. If you read the book, PM me your thoughts. My high school book club has had some interesting thought provoking discussions about it.
Read the transcript and watch the video of the kids’ interactions with the police. Choose to be informed.
Once police officer involved told the mom maybe this incident would teach the boys to “speak up for themselves” in the future.
I don’t think this would have helped if the other party believes that they are just making things up or lying.
What terrible advice. Black and brown boys who"speak up for themselves" when talking to nosey parkers or police officers have an unfortunate tendency to get beaten up or shot. I’m positive these kids’ mother does NOT want them to “speak up for themselves” when unjustly stopped by police.
Speaking up is definitely a big NO for teen boys of color. @“Cardinal Fang” is correct. That would have escalated the issue. Better and safer just to be silent. We’ve taken our son to meet admissions counselors and he has a difficult time speaking up in that environment. If a strange woman began grilling him, he would definitely shut down and probably be looking for an escape. I wish others in the group would have spoken up, I certainly would have.
How could they “speak up for themselves”? Did this woman tell them she was calling the police after asking nosy questions or just slink away and do it without them knowing? The latter of course.
While driving through my neighborhood one late morning I saw a car drop a guy off at the base of a neighbor’s driveway. The car pulled away and the guy walked up the driveway and then around to the neighbor’s back porch. He then stood there without attempting to go into the house. I thought it odd that this person (who was white by the way) didn’t go to the front door but walked right around back but then once out back didn’t appear to knock on the back door or let himself in.
I know these neighbor’s well enough to know that this was not one of their immediate family members. I pulled two houses down where I could still see the guy on the back porch. I had an internal debate with myself about whether to call the cops. Best I could tell the guy didn’t appear to be trying to break in and it was broad daylight but his actions still seemed weird. What if he did do something bad and I could have stopped it by calling the cops but didn’t. I decided the better safe than sorry route applied here so I called the cops.
While the cops were investigating I called other neighbors to try to get the cell phone number of the neighbors whose house I was concerned about. I found out that the person standing on their back porch was the wife’s nephew who was staying with them for a few days and forgot the code to get in and was trying to call them to get it. I felt bad that I put their nephew in the situation of having to explain himself to the police when he was clearly not doing anything wrong.
What if the nephew had been a person of color, would I be racist for calling the cops on him? Or perhaps a different question is whether others would assume I did it because I was racist?
“What if the nephew had been a person of color”
Based on recent events, the nephew could have wound up dead.
What CSU’s president had to say. https://safety.colostate.edu/ You have to like his response. The boys just didn’t walk up and join the tour, they checked in with admissions first and were told where to meet the tour.
I can see the “badges” now. Hello my name is (all the kids write) inigo montoya (The Princess Bride).
That’s my son’s favorite t-shirt: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/9f70/
Relating to this thread, here is another T-shirt:
@adlgel from your story it sounds as if you knew the neighbors were not home so they would not be in danger if the person was there for the wrong reason. I understand you made a decision, but you did have other choices. You could have called to him and asked him yourself who he was if you felt comfortable enough. You could have tried to reach other neighbors first before calling the police. Since you did call the police, I would hope that you told them an honest report of what was happening without sounding alarm bells.
As for if you would be considered racist if he were black depends on if you took the same pause before calling the police and if you described the incident in the same exact way. The only way you would know is if the same thing happened with a black person. You can’t speculate on how you would have responded We all have racial tendencies and bias, we just have to be aware of them and admit to them. It doesn’t make us evil or bad necessarily.
I view what this woman did as performing a racially biased act, more likely than not, whether intentionally or unintentionally. She put these boys, and others, in a potentially harmful situation for absolutely NO reason. She had ample opportunity and viable options to resolve her “fears” that did not involve calling anyone.
Unless someone lives under a rock, we are now fully aware of the harm that can come from calling the police on someone that makes us feel “uncomfortable.” I fully admit I was once under that rock. The “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign was meant for potential terroristic activity, not boys wearing black, coming late to a college tour, not answering a nosy woman’s questions. Many have taken it way too far and people are paying for it with their lives.
I think the woman was nuts to worry but she did so she called. Once she put it into action, the cops couldn’t have acted any differently. The 911 call would have gone to either the city or county, and then been relayed to campus cops, who wouldn’t have had any information other than they’d received a call about suspecious people on campus joining the tour late, wearing black shirts. The cops asked the kids for ID, asked them to keep their hands out of their pockets while they talked, as they would have for anyone being questioned. The boys brought up that one was shy, and that’s when the cop said maybe he should speak up for himself. NOT a law, not a requirement, just a suggestion The encounter took about 4 minutes because one of the boys was trying to pull the tour info up on his phone and the cop explained there is no wifi on campus except for students. The boys seemed calm, the cops seemed polite, they took their names, it was over. Unfortunately, the boys didn’t know where to go to catch up with the group so called their mother and she told them to leave.
I think any cop called to an investigation has to ask for some facts, their names and what they were doing there, what the problem was. The boys seemed to know who the woman was who’d called it in. The cops asked if they were already accepted for just looking, if they’d looked at other schools (just making conversation), explained about the wifi not being public. I do not think they treated the boys any differently than they would have treated any other teens they were asked to check out. They were sent to investigate a complaint and they did. Four minutes.
The only thing I think the cops could have done was helped them get back to admissions or find the group. It looked like the cops thought the group was still there, said have a nice day, etc. I think if the admin office had know there was a problem they could have invited the boys back to the office and started over, but the boys called their mother and she told them to leave. The school didn’t really have a chance to fix things until much later.
CSU is a public school, but those on campus are guests and don’t have a right to be there. A grade school is a public school and you don’t have the right to be in the building just because it is public. Same with libraries, courthouses, the state capitol. These boys had been invited, but the cops (school) has a right to limit the buildings and grounds to individuals who have a need to be on campus. It happens all the time that people are asked to leave campus who have no business there (or the library, or courthouse, or capitol)…
It seems to me that the schools have to decide how to handle these situations more effectively because there are millions of racists out there and some of them are undoubtedly going on college tours. If schools are going to be rigid about having a reservation, then I think they should ask all participants for documentation at the beginning and not just any URMs. I know I have joined tours late and have never been asked about it. Next time it could be Black students or rural students with MAGA hats. I think it is important that the school have a plan to manage this properly.
If I were responsible for CSU admissions I would be very concerned about this and be very actively reaching out to these students. It appears that they are doing that. Good for them.
I disagree with people who think the police did the right thing.
The cops did the wrong thing. They did not try to figure out what was going on. They did not bother to alert or check with the tour guide to see if the boys belonged to the group. They just snatched the boys and interrogated them. The boys were walking with the tour group. They were not prowling alone on anyone’s property. Why would they deserve an arrest for interrogation? Nothing in the lengthy conversation between the woman and the police department indicated that the boys were a potential danger to the public. No guns or bombs were reported. If the police thought the boys were dangerous then they should have stopped the whole tour group to investigate more, not just the two boys. How would they know there were no other dangerous people in the tour group? Because the woman did not report the others? My neighborhood schools were locked down for searching by the police couple times because there were reports of drugs or weapons although nothing was found in the end.