Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
Paranoid? Maybe. Tell that to the dad who went walking with his daughter out in public, and because somebody thought it looked "suspicious", had to deal with
a multi-hour, multi-agency investigation. Or tell that to dads in Virginia who wonder if they should hold hands with their kids, because the VA Department of Health has
posters telling people to call the cops if they see it. Heck, tell that to
Henry Gates, who got arrested because a neighbor saw a Black man struggling with Gates' front door and called police with her "suspicions". (Of course, at least Dr. Gates got a beer out of it.)
Yes, there's a big difference between "unusual" and "suspicious". And most people aren't trained well enough to be able to make that distinction.
Amen.
A coworker recently got an email from somebody in her neighborhood group who we will call "W." Apparently, W had seen a suspicious looking man sitting in his car watching kids get off the school bus. So W decided to send around an email to everyone in the neighborhood email group "warning" them about the strange man watching kids get off the school bus. Of course, it turned out to be a guy waiting for his kid to get off the bus so the kid wouldn't have to walk home through the rain. After a threat to call the police on W, she issued an "apology," in the style of, "I'm sorry if anyone was offended but I was just thinking of the kids..."
Mike