“Strom also noted that many of the contacts between University police and people on campus are generated by calls from University members who are reporting what they perceive to be suspicious behavior.”

How can we fault the officers for simply responding to the reports of suspicious activity they have received? It would appear that a great deal of the racial discrimination could be alleviated simply by educating members of the WU community on what does and doesn’t constitute suspicious behavior.

second, i don’t see why anybody can sooooo quickly say that it is absurd NOT to use race as a factor just because more black people are more likely to commit crimes. besides the possibilities that blacks are oversampled (on account of being black and, varying by location, perhaps on the proportion of black people overall), simply saying “yes–use race!” seems naive. i hate to be prejudice the situation but i imagine that 90% of the people who so quickly agree are NOT black. using race as the major factor could exacerbate racial tensions and leave open the possibility of overused discretion by cops. why not oversample whites also so that claims that they are using ‘race’ lose their vigor? i’m not saying we shouldn’t use race at all, but i don’t think it’s as simple as ‘once we establish its relevance we use it without any hesitation or contriteness’.

WHAT IS HIS RESPONSE WHEN THE FINGER OF ‘RACISM IS POINTED RIGHT AT THE UNIVERSITY?

Take the recent incident of the Cambridge police officer. If something looks suspicious, I would much rather have the police double check the situation because nowadays criminals are becoming really good at doing things behind the scenes.

The suspect was wearing a red hoodie. I was wearing a relatively tight fitting red thermal shirt, which looks nothing like a hoodie. I’m swiping my way into my dorm before 10 pm and I was/am about 7-8 inches shorter than the description if the assailant. I’m visibly overweight, the assailant was supposedly slender. The only match between me and the assailant was a red top (disregarding the different material and design) and being a black male.

Laptop thefts? Guy carrying two laptop bags? Suspicious!

Black male wearing red hoodie commits crime? Black male wearing red hoodie sighted shortly after? Suspicious!

“Approached by a police officer as a result of fitting a suspect profile” != “arrested, tried, and sentenced.” The police officers would be actively remiss in their duty if they failed to approach these guys!

Fact: There has been an increase in the amount of crime including the theft of laptops.
Response: Police officer sees an individual carrying what appears to be two laptop bags leaving a University building and requests the individual to present two forms of identification.

That seems like a reasonable response to me. No arrests. Just asking him for identification. Where is the racial profiling? The logic behind this is: “A black person cannot be suspicious because it is racial profiling.”

When police officers face disciplinary actions after acting in a completely reasonable manner their ability to work effectively in the future MUST be affected. Nobody here knows what was going through this officer’s head but because of the extreme left wing response of students and the University, you can be damn sure he will be thinking about this incident the next time he investigates a suspicious person.

What if that prevents him from stopping a suspicious individual from entering a dorm on the South 40 and raping a freshmen girl? Considering the crime around the WashU campus, I would rather police officers do more than less.

Being a police officer is difficult. Don’t make it tougher for them.

Maybe we should just put up a big sign at the edges of campus saying “watch out minorities the police are following you” That is essentially what WashU did to Mother’s Bar.

So when is WUPD going to have race sensitivity training, fundraisers for education, etc?

Think about that, then decide whether WashU took the Mother’s incident way too far.

I agree with John, the whistle just blew now the ball is in your court WashU.