I think that’s exactly what they were doing. They got a report that some possibly dangerous men had joined the tour group and they investigated a) if the men were armed, and b) if they belonged with the group. The boys checked out on both counts so the police let them go on their way. Their mistake was in not helping them find the tour group or, if that wasn’t possible, helping them in some other way. Service recovery, folks.
Why would the boys want the fact that they were being checked made public, and what could the tour guide add? “I don’t know. They joined the tour late”? The only think stopping the entire group would do would be to make the entire tour nervous about the boys, hold up the larger group, and embarrass the boys in public.
They weren’t arrested and they weren’t interrogated. They were questioned and allowed to go on their way.
No one reports a stranger to the police for good citizenship. I think it was a safe assumption on their part that the reporter was concerned the boys were dangerous.
Again, you would prefer they were publicly shamed instead of having a discrete conversation on the side?
The police could have been more sensitive to the situation and, in particular I find their comments about the boys avoiding suspicion by being forthcoming to a stranger troubling, but they did their basic job, which is to keep members of the community and the general public safe.
Why did the police not pull the women aside and talk to her first? Why could they not discretely follow the group first? I find it very disturbing that anyone can just call out another person who makes them uncomfortable for interrogation by the police.
When picking them out of the group the police already shamed them. The video of the boys questioned by the police is already made public, isn’t it?
The police should not have singled out at the beginning. There was no urgency. They could follow the group and obverse what was going on. If nothing was suspicious then they should not do anything. The woman already said maybe she was too paranoid. And sadly the policewoman who took the call did not question the woman why she suspected the boys.
And when the police questioned the boys, they could simply call the admission office to know if the boys registered or not instead of letting the brother struggling with the cellphone. What would they do if the boys could not find the email?
Arrest = stop, interrogate = question
Again. I don’t prefer they were publicly shamed. I don’t want they have any kind of shame.
I thought about your post a while. It seems to me there would have been a different common response everywhere I’ve lived, more than a dozen places in half a dozen states along the eastern seaboard. Usually, in my experience, the reaction would be to walk over, stay a distance away, and call out, “Hi, how are you? Do you need some help?” and then decide based on the answer how to proceed, which I’ve done pretty regularly over the years. Only once was the explanation sketchy enough I went home and called the police and they were concerned it might be connected to a series of break-ins, but wasn’t. The story checked out. The individual was just driving around,parking her car and walking up our driveways and into our yards, to take pictures of our historic houses for a book she was working on, without any advance warning to the neighborhood about her project. She was a young, thin, stylish blond woman in an older model volvo station wagon.
I currently live on a fairly isolated country road with neighbors at least a mile apart. If any of us saw a stranger walking around a house, when the owners weren’t there, we would drive up and roll down the window and follow the same script. And this happens on a regular basis.
Come on now, “arrested” as most people understand and refer to it when discussing police interactions is not only being detained, it is taken into custody, often in handcuffs. These boys were detained, questioned (some would indeed say interrogated), and released. But they were not “arrested.”
I think the whole thing was appalling. The fact that someone’s racial bias was given this much indulgence should really make us all afraid.
I don’t think many in law enforcement would agree that that’s the right way to respond to a call. What if there was an issue? Now the police have pointed out who has reported the incident. If neighbors call the police because of noise or gunshots or specious activity at a house on the block, the police don’t tell the suspects who made the report. If an incident is happening, the cops don’t stop to ask the reporter for more information.
The police didn’t get the 911 directly. They did not not know the urgency of the situation but just what the dispatcher has relayed. They followed their procedures to investigate a complaint, and quickly dismissed it. 4 minutes.
I agree that name tags or hats or something to identify the group would be good, but it is unlikely these boys would have gotten them because they were late. The mother then would have been terrorized because two boys in black shirts without name tags were following the group.
Yes, it seems the college will implement name tags, but this SHOULD be unnecessary for what happened here. (some colleges already do this, but because of issues such as entering buildings and such require limiting the numbers in a group.)
The fact is, this is not about a problem with unwanted people joining tour groups here. This is about people taking it upon themselves to involve police/security because they deem someone other than themselves suspicious for acting in a different manner than they would behave. Are we jumping the gun a bit saying she did it with racial intent? Possibly, but people such as this woman need to be aware of their reasons why they are feeling the way they are. We also need to be aware of what are reactions may lead to.
What if one of the boys routinely carries a pocketknife, which is perfectly legal? What if they weren’t as reserved in their reaction to being singled out, patted down (they were patted down to an extent) and questioned? The point is, “Good Samaritans” are putting people in danger. It is not a new thing, but we are all more aware of the possible consequences actions like this can have.
An anecdote: I once called the police while driving behind a vehicle that was driving very erratically. They were swerving back and forth, from the opposite lane to the shoulder (luckily no oncoming traffic) multiple times. I assumed they were drunk and since this is what I said, the dispatcher initially focused more on that point than what was actually happening, grilling me with how I “knew” this. I felt as if she didn’t believe me and wasn’t taking me seriously. In hindsight, I should have just relayed what was happening without trying to input my feelings of the state of the driver. It would have saved a lot of back and forth and put the focus on the action rather than the accusation.
@alh - yes, I have thought for a while about what different reactions I could have had. Perhaps this is a product of our times and the fact that we are inundated with negative news stories but rather than assuming this guy had some completely legit reason for his actions, I was willing to believe that there was a chance he was up to no good. And once I formed the opinion he could be up to no good and that he was a tall, adult male, approaching him directly wasn’t something I was comfortable with. Similar to the previous poster who crossed the street when faced with an oncoming group of men (whether white or black).
I am not sure whether the police did the right thing.
I wonder if someone called in and said there were some “White people” on the college tour “acting odd”, how would they respond to that? I honestly don’t know. Would they question all the White people or decide that acting odd isn’t a crime and do nothing? I am not sure, but in my mind, whether they did the right thing depends on the answer to that question.
adigel: in your scenario, I’m not assuming anything. I’m talking to him from the next yard and ideally across a fence. If he mumbles and takes off, I call police. If he charmingly introduces himself, I still keep eyes on him until I’m real comfortable he’s telling me the truth. I might write down his license plate before I go home.
If I had the neighbors number, I would call them first. Calling the police is my last resort. I have done so.
I’m hoping she would do things differently if she were to encounter this same situation again. It’s easy to see this in retrospect, but perhaps if her anxiety were so high around the two young men, she should have stepped away from the remainder of tour until it ended, so she bore the burden of the anxiety instead of forcing it upon the two young men. A paradigm shift for the “see something, say something” message that she was heeding.
I also like what the president of CSU said in his statement - sort of a warning to future visitors:
ETA - as a though experiment, I wonder what would happen if a family arrived at a tour wearing MAGA hats?
I am a mother of NA boys who will one day go on campus tours and this incident appalls and sickens me. I won’t be able to go on all their college tours either. I hope things change for the better when it is my sons’ turn. Not sure I will send my son alone to CSU if they decide to apply. My boys are athletes, concert band musicians and are academically sound. They attend a private college prep institution and wear black on occasion and stick their hands in their pockets too, sometimes. I feel for these boys, what if they were mine? I would be doing all I can to call out the caller lady to show herself and publicly apologize to my sons since she felt she could publicly shame them. Not all NAs will speak up for themselves because that usually ends up wrong more than right. This is such a different environment and I’m sure even my boys would feel ‘ill at ease’ and stay silent. These capable young men did nothing wrong. I am heartbroken for them. It took a lot of gumption and courage for these young men to be there for the tour and to be treated that way is such a step backwards. I am glad that the school is reaching out to them but my guess is that they would not like the notoriety of being 'those two Native Americans who got arrested on tour" and will choose a different college. SMH
But if it was a legal knife, the cops would have returned it and sent them on their way.
In Colorado more than a dozen Front Range police officers have been shot, with 4 killed, since New Year’s Eve. They are being very careful when responding to any calls.
“You know, some simple identifier from admissions like a name tag with date on it would go a long way…”
“I agree that name tags or hats or something to identify the group would be good, but it is unlikely these boys would have gotten them because they were late.”
I think it’s kind of sad that name tags are needed because of one bigoted, busybody. BTW, news reports indicate that the young men did check in at the admissions office before joining the group late. It surprises me that nobody touched base with the admissions office prior to confronting these two young men.
A tag may help a little bit but not name. Why should I show my name to strangers?
Many times people put the tags on the jackets at the beginning of tour. After a few minutes of walking, people sweat and take the jackets off and don’t bother with the tags anymore.
I don’t think that any police officer would have done anything different no matter what the race of the kids with information from dispatcher which based on the call was as follows:
kids did not seem to be part of tour group
would not give their names
one had hand in large pocket the entire time (and when police arrives kid still had hand in that pocket)
were acting “oddly”
As much as you can fault the caller for idiotically calling the police, and say there was nothing wrong with what the kids did ( there wasn’t) I can’t imagine a police officer not doing exactly what occurred here based on these things.
“Or that no one from admissions walked them to the group.”
Because it shouldn’t be necessary because rational people don’t act like this woman did. I’m sure CSU has given thousands of tours without incident with many occasions of people joining late. It happens. The problem, IMO, isn’t a problem with the university’s tour policies. It’s a problem with prejudice in this country and a political climate where some corners are fanning the flames on this kind of stuff because of an agenda.