One possible harm is this: the next block over, they still look like they might not be related; should they be stopped then? How about the block after that? And after that? It’s going to take a long time to get to the park, or the library, or home if every block or so someone decides that they look suspicious.
Dispatch will contact the same cop, and that cop will be able to reply that he already investigated. 911 frequently gets mutliple calls for the same incident (especially with cell phones).
I wonder what would have happened if he’d told them upfront. Would they have sent him on his way, or started another round of questioning - this time about how he came to have a black grandchild in the first place?
It’s not like an actual kidnapper would tell the cops he’d lured the toddler out of a playground with candy.
By my lights the cop had the info they need. They’ve seen the situation first hand. The person isn’t carrying the child off forcibly, the child doesn’t look frightened, the child isn’t restrained, or exhibiting obvious signs of abuse. Why do they need to ask “What’s your relationship with this girl?” in order to answer the question of if a reasonable suspicion of something untoward was going on? The 911 caller didn’t have that information and they drew a conclusion. The cop should be able to draw a conclusion without that information as well. Police are charged with interfering with law-abiding citizens as little as possible. They’re there to serve and to protect, not to nanny and mollycoddle. If there was no reasonably obvious evidence of wrongdoing(something the 911 caller would have been able to see which the police could corroborate quickly) then continue the detainment or arrest the individual. Otherwise, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, you folks have a nice day” and move on.
It’s the first step on a slippery slope. A slope the framers of the constitution established a line around. A supermajority of this nation, at its founding and reinforced in numerous cases in the courts, including the Supreme Court, have said cops shouldn’t ask unnecessary questions or pursue an investigation where there is no reasonable cause to suspect a crime has been or is being committed. Furthermore, the citizens have a right to refuse them without ANY penalty or further harassment. That’s the bottom line.
I know a handful of cops, I like them as people. But I’m not going to pretend we’re equals when we run into each other in the performance of their duties. I give what I’m required to give and no more. Anything else is playing out the rope which could potentially end up around my neck.
Enjoy,
Steven
On the race issue, I thought the story was written by a white guy. Something about the juxtaposition of when race was mentioned.
Frankly, I think he should have just said, ‘Babysitting my granddaughter’ and fumed about it later.
I don’t think it was about racism, I think it was about pedophilia and a period of hyper-viligence about child safety on the part of the police.
And I have never seen one police car respond to any call.
You don’t have to be forcible to kidnap a child. Some kids will go with anyone who has a good story to tell.
It’s more common by orders of magnitude. Stranger abductions are exceptionally rare. The average numbers of stranger abductions in the United States in a given years is about 100-150 or so. I don’t know how many different-race grandparents there are but I’d bet my house it’s more than 100, and I’d bet ten bucks it’s more than 100,000.
Incidentally, just a reminder: He wasn’t actually the girl’s grandfather. He’s her mother’s godfather, which so far as I know gives him no official legal status whatsoever.
Now, having already given the cops his name, suppose he tells them “I’m her grandfather”. The cops check his name in a database, and find that he’s not. What’s his situation, and the child’s, now?
The way to end the conversation in ten seconds flat is to ask “Am I free to go?”. A lot of folks are talking about how he didn’t respect the cops here. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: He had the full expectation that they would do their legitimate job. If they had, then his question of “Am I free to go?” would have ended the situation immediately.
To those of you who say he should have just said, “She’s my granddaughter,” are you somehow forgetting that a child molester who abducted a child is perfectly capable of telling the cops that he’s the abducted kid’s grandfather?
Reminds me of Jeffery Dahmer telling the cops that the guy staggering around in the street was his boyfriend, and the cops helping Dahmer to take the guy back inside, where Dahmer later ate him.
So police shouldn’t respond to calls of “suspicious” activity? Exactly. You can slippery slope it either way.
Race issues will disappear by dealing with economic differences between the races, not by setting up anti-racism racist procedures. “You can investigate calls of suspicion unless someone would call you a racist for it.”
I agree with those who are saying that we have no way of knowing what would have happened if he had said he was the girl’s grandfather. They might have tried to verify it somehow, they might have tried to question the girl (and who knows what that would have led to, kids being known to give the wrong answer to things at the worst possible time), they might have said they didn’t believe him, since they were of different races, they might have done any number of things, some of which would have had a worse outcome than what actually happened.
You might argue that any cop would simply accept the answer as reasonable and move on, but that’s what they should have done after he gave them his name, address, and birth date (which they could have verified) and then asked if he was free to go. These cops acted unreasonably and possibly illegally, so there is no telling what they might have done if he had answered their questions. I’m not suggesting they were out to get the man, but they were already suspicious and any innocent thing could have made them more suspicious. It’s much easier to cut off the questioning at the beginning than to wait until they’ve already made a mistake based on what you told them.
Remember, we don’t necessarily know the whole story. They said they were responding to a call about a suspicious person, but maybe they weren’t - maybe they were investigating a case of kidnapping or child abuse and thought he matched the description of the perp. As soon as he says something that vaguely matches what they know about the perp (maybe he liked to claim he was the victim’s grandparent) he’s being taken down to the station and held for questioning. That scenario is extremely unlikely, but it does happen. The cost of letting it happen is potentially so high and the cost of asserting your rights so low, that only a fool lets it happen. Refusing to answer a cop’s questions about your activities is like wearing your seatbelt - it is probably just an annoying waste of time, but it could save your life.
You’re saying that there’s no feasible way to show that she’s plausibly your grand-daughter in five minutes? For instance giving the police woman the parents’ phone numbers or showing knowledge about the local closed school and daycare centers?
No, our point is that police are [gross generalization and stereotyping alert] notoriously suspicious of and hostile toward people who even express knowledge of their legal rights, never mind stand on them.
You have to pick your battles in life, and this one should have been avoided, or fought with a letter to the editor.
Do you forget that the child, but not the grand-father, knew the street well enough to know about the cats? The caller may have been an honestly concerned person who has seen the little girl several times, but never with this man.
That was homophobia; they should have PC’d that poor guy.
How far is he expected to go to prove himself to a cop who has no reason to be questioning him? So he gives the parent’s number and she doesn’t answer her phone. What then? Suddenly deciding at that point that he doesn’t want to answer any more questions would look even more suspicious. Better to cut it off at the beginning.
Keep in mind that what he did worked. It may have taken a few minutes, but it worked. The fact that they had two other cars so close by makes me think that they were already prepared to go much further if, for example, the girl’s mother didn’t answer the phone when he tried to prove who he was. Of course answering the questions probably would have worked as well, but refusing to answer always works (if anything will) because the Constitution guarantees it to work.
Was it homophobia? I thought it was that the police were afraid of looking homophobic and that’s why they returned him to Dahmer.
The goal, from the officer’s standpoint, isn’t to prove anything one way or the other about their relationship. The goal is to measure “suspiciousness.” If I’ve got a guy who doesn’t seem worried and is fully forthcoming, that’s an entirely different thing from a guy who seems paranoid about answering questions and wants to get away from you (the police officer) urgently.
Whether he’s the girl’s grandfather, family friend, or some dude who was hired to look after her doesn’t really matter. The question is if his story seems plausible and is told matter of factly.
I never said anything about a slippery slope, or racism. My question is purely practical.
You didn’t say the word “slippery slope”, but that’s what you were saying. If you let police stop anyone for looking funny, everyone who looks funny will always be being stopped. I’m just pointing out the flip side of that coin. You don’t stop people that look funny, and you’re likely to get a bunch of funny activities going on. 
I’m not talking about people in general; I’m talking about this particular person - how many times should he be stopped and questioned?
So we need a law that specifically absolves this one guy? That doesn’t terribly feasible. :dubious:
Explain to me the logistics of this system of individual-targeted laws. Does it have a newsletter?