… while Black, and a neighbor calls the police on them.
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Wyoming, Michigan, not the state of Wyoming.
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I was so appalled when I read this. Excuse was that the house had been broken into a couple weeks before, but in the ensuing time period, it was shown multiple times with no calls to police. Neighbors HAD to know that the house was being shown.
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There’s a ridiculous number of videos of these types of incidents on youtube. A ton of them show straight up racial bias by police along with a disregard for the law on the part of the police - it’s really disheartening and frightening at the same time.
With the more egregious incidents sometimes lawsuits are filed and settlements are paid by taxpayers while police continue on doing the same thing with no consequences.
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In this particular case, it may be more on the neighbor who called the police and primed them into thinking that there was a dangerous suspect present. It would not be surprising if some of the officers felt similarly to those who posted on this old Reddit thread: Reddit - Dive into anything
With neighbors like that… but part of me wishes they would buy the house to start breaking stereotypes (or to really annoy the racists nearby). I fully understand if they cross that one off their list though.
People can be super frustrating. Why in the world do some feel the color of our skin defines who we are? The mere proposal of that stymies the brain. Those folks are definitely missing a few neurons.
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Certainly true that the neighbors initiated the whole thing. But I suspect if two white women in suits and Lululemon had walked out the front door, guns would’ve been lowered and cuffs left on belts.
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Aren’t you drawing conclusions on police behavior without evidence? And isn’t drawing conclusions without evidence what we are unhappy about the neighbors and police doing?
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In that case, would the neighbor have called the police in the first place?
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It seems to me that if the house had a for sale sign in front, there would have been a steady stream of prospective buyers going through the house.
Why were the police called on black people? Was there a lock box on the front door, indicating that the house was for sale?
Wyoming is a suburb of Grand Rapids, houses are selling like hot cakes there and have been for a few years, not just this year. I talked to someone last night, they put their parents house on the market on Tuesday, had a good offer on Friday. It had sat empty for 3 years, was not in a desirable area and I suspect that it was not updated.
Lots of questions here. Definitely not a welcome to the neighborhood sign when the neighbor is calling 911 on you
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The real estate agent said there was a lockbox. I would be surprised if there wasn’t a For Sale sign. So, I do question the police reaction with guns and handcuffs, when there was no evidence this was anything but a showing. I don’t think they get a pass, just because the neighbors were awful.
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i feel rotten for the 15 yr old kid who went through this.
but no idea if it was race related.
i think about our neighborhood. we’ve had a lot of crime, break-ins, and cars stolen recently. The nextdoor neighbor app is full of this, and people are always encouraging others to watch out for neighborhood crime.
Our neighbors just sold their house after living here 20 years with no sign, all unbeknownst to us (it happened fast!). If i had known it had been broken into a few weeks before, and saw someone who didnt live there going into their house, I probably would have been vigilant and called for help.
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The house had been broken into one week prior and an arrest had been made. The police knew this at the time of the call.
The procedures are to secure the scene and they quickly got to the facts and released the realtor and clients.
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After seeing that no doors or windows were damaged in order to gain entry, wouldn’t the sensible move be to enter the house without guns pointed, and ask what these business-casually dressed people were doing there?
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The telling sign would be if the neighbors called about other showings or not.
Definitely, and sadly I suspect this would have been the case if those looking at the house had been a different color/gender.
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“To protect and to serve.”
Who were they protecting and who were they serving? It’s fortunate that things worked out well in this instance, but this is precisely the kind of situation in which one wrong moves winds up with someone dead. When will we ever learn?
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Again, there had been showings in between. The house was for sale. There was no reason to approach THIS showing any differently.
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But the cops don’t know how many showings there have been, if the realtor scheduled the viewing. All the cops know is that someone called about a break in and that there had been a break in the week before.
Police procedure says secure the scene, then ask questions. That’s what they did. If you don’t like the police procedures, change them. Change the training, change the contact rules, change the number of cops responding to each incident. Would you want to be a cop (or have your child be one) and casually walk into a house where you don’t know what’s on the other side of the door? Most times you will be safe and fine and it really is just a realtor showing a house, but not every time. It was not the week before when someone was arrested at this same address.
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I’d like to know what the neighbors said. Obviously there was no sign of a break in, and no actions that looked like a break in. So, what did the neighbors, who knew the house was being shown, describe? What did they see, and tell the police, that could make it look at all credible as a break in which required guns and handcuffs? Do the police just take the word of a caller, with no corroboration (a caller who we can see obviously was calling from a place of prejudice)?
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Sigh….this is beyond getting old. We can’t do anything without appearing suspect.