“A 66-year-old University of Massachusetts-Boston professor said he was shocked when police showed up at his door three weeks ago and asked him to answer questions about a liquor store robbery,” CBS News reported today. “Robert Johnson, who is also a lawyer, told CBS Boston on Thursday, August 6 that he purchased a $30 bottle of Hennessey the night before from Blanchards, a liquor store. Store employees apparently thought Johnson looked a lot like a man caught on store surveillance cameras in March stealing 20 bottles of cognac from a basement storage room. They took down Johnson’s license plate and police showed up at his door the next day, he said. … ‘[The officer] showed me a picture and said “this is you on March 13.” I said “this picture looks nothing like me.”‘ Blanchards would not share the surveillance video with CBS Boston and neither would police, but Johnson says the suspect was much younger and bigger with no facial hair.”
Comment: The thief was a black guy, and Professor Johnson is black, so it must be him right? Where do we get these people? Maybe we should expect this from low-education liquor store clerks (no, on second thought, we shouldn’t), but we must demand better from our police. A cop who can’t do any better than this should be kicked off the police force. Sheesh.
After all the recent news stories about police abuse of minorities (at least the media are finally paying attention to this issue, but it’s unfortunate that it took spilled blood to get their attention), does anyone out there still believe that profiling isn’t going on? That our society isn’t full people, some with badges and guns, to whom all black people look alike? Who can’t see anything but skin color? Witnesses who don’t notice that the “suspect” has a beard and the perp in the surveillance video didn’t, that the “suspect” is old and the perp in the video is young? Sheesh.
I hope he sues the shit out of the liquor store and the cops. I hope both the store and the city have to shell out big bucks to this man. This crap needs to stop, and the only way to stop it is by making stupid, brainless, racist morons pay out of their own pockets for their idiotic behavior. Without some sort of penalty, there’s nothing to stop them from doing it again.