The question arises regularly, whether it’s because of the random person with different color skin, the guy around your house who is unfamiliar or the parents who let their kids do something you wouldn’t.  What to do?  Call the cops.

Ya know, I’m just going to complain and get some stuff off my chest.

So I’m working last week and get dispatched to a call of ‘Suspicious Activity.’ Ya’ll wanna know what the suspicious activity was? Someone walking around in the dark with a flashlight and crow bar? Nope. Someone walking into a bank with a full face mask on? Nope.

It was two black males who were jump starting a car at 930 in the morning. That was it. Nothing else. Someone called it in.

People. People. People. If you’re going to be a racist, stereotypical jerk…keep it to yourself. Don’t call the police and make them get involved into your douchebaggery.

That’s all. End rant.

This from a verified LEO at reddit’s r/protect and serve.  This isn’t about the cop who reacts to the call abusively, but about the role you, your neighbors, any random person with a telephone, who observes something that raises his or her hackles enough to dial 911.

For well over a decade, we’ve been told “if you see something, say something,” though it was a response to theoretical terrorists threats, like the abandoned knap sack on a subway train that will explode and kill hundreds. You know, the one that never happened. But still, a million extra eyes and ears, and it made for such a spiffy buy-in for people to fear the terrorist hordes.

But it also empowered people to complain about anyone or anything that struck them as “unusual,” based upon each person’s peculiar sense of what is, or should be, usual in their tiny sphere of influence.  Elie Mystal tells how it affects the new black guy in the burbs.

Having recently moved to the suburbs, I find myself more keenly aware of my race-in-public than I ever was in Manhattan. For instance, I can easily walk from the train station to my house, but I prefer to take a bus because I don’t like walking past people’s houses at night when coming home from work — full disclosure: I also don’t like walking. And when I’m really late it’s less about the “walking” past these houses and more “drunkenly stumbling” past my neighbors. But still. When another black family moved in on my block, I was ecstatic. Now I can credibly say “sorry officer, you must be looking for a different black man.” Mwahahaha.

And the offense of walking in a white neighborhood isn’t just a problem for Elie, but grandfathers from India, who have the misfortune of not speaking English when they come to visit their child in the United States.

Or the parent who believes that it’s good for their child’s independence to allow them to walk to and from a park, even though neighbors are deathly afraid of “stranger danger,” compelling them to call the cops to stop the bad parents who choose not to bubble wrap their kids.

While it’s true that what follows the call, how the police deal with the situation they encounter, is on their shoulders, the fact that someone thought it necessary to call the cops at all is an independent problem.  We’ve gone from an attitude of live-and-let-live toward how others choose to enjoy their day, to a they’re-not-behaving-the-way-I-think-they-should perspective, compelling us to call in the cavalry to make sure that the black=skinned guy in our neighborhood isn’t there to rape our daughters, because you never know about them.

It’s bad enough that police may profile motorists, walkers, breathers on their own, but that the concept of see something, say something has empowered the busy bodies amongst us to alert the brave warriors to rid their world of anything or anyone who makes them feel uncomfortable exacerbates the problem enormously.

Can’t people keep their nose out of other people’s business?  Well, apparently not. Even if you do, because you certainly aren’t “that guy” who calls 911 the minute you see a misplaced black guy, it only takes one of your lovely neighbors to call and bring 5-0 down on their heads.

Even the police don’t want it.  Maybe, despite all the bad things you think about the police, like all cops are killers, they really don’t want to spend their day hassling every person who isn’t behaving in a way that is fully consistent with the most delicate neighbor’s sensitivities.  Maybe, they don’t want to hassle people for walking, breathing, in the wrong neighborhood.

And before the neighbors hit speed dial, bear in mind that every interaction has the potential to turn from a quick and friendly question of what they’re doing in a white neighborhood to a deadly confrontation.  No, they all don’t, but some do, and if one does that was initiated by your itchy hatred of anyone doing anything that doesn’t conform to your perfect world, and ends up dead for it, was that really what you hoped to gain when you called the cops?

If there is a crime, call the cops. If there is a guy with whom you aren’t familiar minding his own business while walking within your world, don’t. They’re allowed to walk, just as you are.  And the fact that someone prefers to allow their children, their friends, their family, to engage in otherwise perfectly ordinary conduct that somehow doesn’t conform to your personal choices does not give rise to a reason to bring the full weight of government down on their head.

Maybe you’re the oddball, and not them. Either way, it’s not a crime to think differently than you think.  Don’t call the cops. Don’t waste their time. Don’t hassle people needlessly. Don’t be the needless source of the misery a confrontation might bring. Just don’t do it.