Black Teen Sues over Arrest after Buying an Expensive Belt

I wondered what the stupid debate was. someone coming in and saying the black people being irresponsible with money. unbelievable.

 

I'm sorry but what does your anecdotal evidence have to do with black shoppers?

just a completely meandering off topic rant about TSA screeners and muslims.

prefaced by a sentence that says "these black shoppers need to chill out"




anyways...

curious about the details- did the teen have to go in for questioning?

I wonder if he would have played his cards right and simply asked the officers "am I under arrest?" or "am I free to go?"

would they have released him?

 

I very rarely respond to people's posts, largely because of responses like what we've seen from some of the lesser-equipped debaters in this thread, but I'll take this one, since you have made an intellectual effort.

HE did nothing wrong, you are absolutely right (assuming for a moment that the media's story is accurate -- another matter). But my point is who should HE be mad at? Should he be mad at the Barney's employees and/or the police, who see theft on a daily basis and see who is committing theft on a daily basis? They are taking action to protect their franchise, and they are making decisions based on information that they have gathered. How can you blame them for playing the percentages? Isn't this what we as humans do on a daily basis? I don't touch snakes, I don't try to run across the highway, I don't buy jewelry out of the trunk of someone's car. I do this, despite the fact that the snake may be harmless, there could be no cars on the highway, and the diamond bought out of a car trunk may be legitimate and not stolen. But I'm not taking the chance. Why should Barney's take the chance?

The person the young man should be upset at is not the Barney's employee. He should be mad at the people that came before him at Barney's and committed crimes. He should be mad at the people that had their mugshot in the paper for committing crimes. It was those people that impacted the very rational thinking of the Barney's employees -- was it not?

 

who were those people again? what information have they gathered?

from one of the linked articles in this thread:

 

There you go again. Making up ****.

How about this. 68%(28.8 for blacks) of Larceny-theft is by white people. For fraud it is 66% (31.8) committed by white people in this country. So for all we know it is the ones they don't expect committing these crimes.

Until you PROVE that this Barney's store was the victim of theft and that black people were usually the thefts then you can't make the argument that they are playing the percentages. You are just blindly assuming things without really any basis...

well except that black people MUST steal more from the store right? They are black and therefore it must be true that they are always stealing from the store!

 

Yes, yes and yes. Finally, more and more people are unlocking this common sense insight.

Now watch the liberals around here squeal and try to label you a racist -- it's all they can do so excuse them. They're incapable of arguing back at you with fact, logic and reason.

 

He's absolutely right, I commonly ask every Jew I meet to tell a joke, they're some pretty damn funny people.

 

Congrats on ignoring the post directly above you.

 

Those are nation-wide statistics. They mean very little when it comes to individual cities or companies. Also, you should be careful with the examples you give. Given that roughly 70% of people in this country are categorized at white, it's not overly surprising that around 70% of most crime categories are comprised of white people. In both categories, black people are overrepresented (black people are about 13% of the population). That said, given that criminals are overwhelmingly male, it's probably also true that white men are overrepresented in these categories.

 

I said they were nation-wide. You are right, they don't mean much when talking about a individual company...but WHERE are those statistics? You have someone blindly assuming that this store is always hit up by black people...based on what information?

The stats don't tell the story, in either case...but when you have someone blindly assuming that black people are stealing from this particular store and he has no evidence to come to that conclusion then that's why they are brought up. To show him that white people are also capable of theft since that seem to never occur to him.

 

Yeah, I didn't want to say anything (picking on the less educated), but when he cited those statistics, he was reinforcing my point. His statistics basically said that blacks were twice as likely to commit theft. He makes my point for me and then thinks he's right! I love such comedy.

 

so if every single black person was arrested and checked when entering a Barney's store from now on, you would be perfectly fine with it? Where are you taking this argument and what are your implications. You clearly find nothing wrong with what Barney's did. Therefore please clarify.

 

I'm not surprised you read those stats that way. It not only speaks of your ignorance but also your prejudice.

Also your point (which you seem to not grasp, which again I'm not surprised by) is irrelevant until you bring up any evidence to actually prove it.

So until you prove your statistics, until you prove that this store had numerous black thefts I don't understand how you could call anyone less educated. You're blabbering non-sense and have nothing to prove any of the **** you're actually saying.

 

I'd say he put that money to good use..... could get a nice $$ lump sum from his lawsuit.. smart kid, way to go. beat the system.

 

I do not doubt that blacks commit a higher % of petty theft than their % of the population. Nor do I doubt that Barney's has had issues with theft. To me it is irrelevant. This particular black man went into the store, was asked for ID, provided it and paid for the belt. Period.

A store/police force had no basis to detain him after he left the store based on the information known.

The idea that black people should be angry at other black people that perpetrate a stereotype of stealing or "getting over" is a separate discussion and does not in any way condone what the security did.

 

"Beat the system"? You mean the system we ALL are part of pay into? "Smart kid" based on coincidence? People that try to beat the system 90% of the time end up living on the margins of society sucking off of us or in prison.

 

Agree completely. Even if 9 out 10 black people were stealing things from the store, that doesn't mean you arrest every single one. That's not how the law is supposed to work.

My issue is this kid coming in here and saying

"Yeah, they did have a basis to detain him because black people are always stealing from that store."

Yet has no information or evidence to prove what he says. The nationwide stats are irrelevant to this story, but were only posted because people like him seem to think that white people aren't capable of stealing from this store.

 

(scoff) I don't want to pick on the less educated, but uh, yeah it is:

Spoiler

If that tenth guy wasn't going so shoplift, he was going to do something else eventually anyway.

 

Jesus, you are brainwashed.

 

This is speculation and conjecture of the highest order.

Sure -- perhaps a white person working in Barney's assumes a young black person is a thief because they have seen a young black person steal before. Does that justify arresting the person without reasonable suspicion? (Hint: skin color is not reasonable suspicion.) But it is equally possible -- actually, more likely -- that a white person working in Barney's assumes a young black person is a thief because they are preconditioned to believe the worst about black people. I am fairly certain that there are a host of employees who have never actually witnessed a black person stealing who still assume that is what black people do.

I am a well-educated practicing attorney. Always well-dressed. Well-mannered. I've been earning 6 figures since the age of 24, and am blessed to be able to buy what I want. But at the end of the day -- I am a black woman. And for me, that means that I can't walk into Saks or Barneys (or hell, even Nordstrom or Dillards) without a white salesperson who probably makes 20% of what I do breathing down my neck, eyeing me suspiciously, and sometimes outright trailing me.

That some of you try to justify that BS is sad, but it's hardly shocking. Maybe I'm jaded, but I pretty much operate on the presumption that white people think the worst of me based solely on the color of my skin. Lots of these posts suggest that it's not a bad way to operate.

Slightly OT, I'd love to see some stats on how many non-black people get away with stealing while the employees are busy following and hounding their paying black customers. But hey, better safe than sorry, right?