Police Hold Black Family At Gunpoint After Typo Misidentifies Their Car As Stolen

[fooferdoggie]

this turned out where the cops apologized after screwing up and did pretty well. but it makes you wonder if it would have went down this way with a white family? but also why did they handcuff the 12 year old? of course they used the see you behaved so all went well. we know how that turns out.​

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Police Hold Black Family At Gunpoint After Typo Misidentifies Their Car As Stolen​

After ordering the driver out of the car, police ordered her son out next. The officers had their guns pointed at the car as well as at the woman and one of the children as they were forced to get out of the car and walk toward the police and face backward with their hands in the air.
Soon after, they placed the son in handcuffs and into one of the police vehicles while the woman talked to McQueen.
“This is all my fault. I apologize for this. I know it was very traumatic for you and your nephew and your son. And like I said, it’s on me. There are consequences that come with that,” McQueen told the woman.
One officer is even seen trying to comfort one of the boys — putting his arm around him after the incident.
“No one ever gets hurt when they cooperate,” another officer said in the video.
The husband then became emotional.
“It could’ve went all wrong for us, though,” he can be heard saying. “If I would’ve went to reach for my phone, we could’ve all got killed.”

Police Hold Black Family At Gunpoint After Typo Misidentifies Their Car As Stolen

The Frisco Police Department in North Texas released the distressing body camera footage of guns drawn on the driver, her husband and two boys.

www.huffpost.com

 

[GermanSuplex]

Horrible.

At least it sounds like the cops were immediately remorseful. Law of averages states that yes, there will be these incidents that we see all too often that are NOT racially motivated, even though they check the same boxes.

Hopefully this was an awful but honest mistake. The officers apologizing and taking accountability should work in their favor.

Maybe this would be the type of case where some routine training would actually be a help.

 

[rdrr]

I am not sure training could have changed the situation. After reading the article, I believe everything was done by standard procedures, and would have had the same result even if it were a family of a different race. The root cause was human error.

The unfortunate reality is that it highlights the actual and legitimate fear that black people have in America when it comes to being stopped by police.

 

[fooferdoggie]

I am not sure training could have changed the situation. After reading the article, I believe everything was done by standard procedures, and would have had the same result even if it were a family of a different race. The root cause was human error.

The unfortunate reality is that it highlights the actual and legitimate fear that black people have in America when it comes to being stopped by police.

but for some reason the cuffed the 12 year old boy but not the driver or the husband.

 

[rdrr]

but for some reason the cuffed the 12 year old boy but not the driver or the husband.

I think they will review that, but my uninformed guess is that they placed him in the car (with cuffs), because he would out of eye sight. They had the mother and father in sight and contained. Maybe that isn't the best practice to have, but plausible since the 12 year old was out of sight, and the police had been erroneously informed that the car in question was a possible auto theft. The second issue was that the couple informed the police that they had a registered weapon in the car. My limited understanding (because I am not a LEO), is that information changes the situation dramatically. Yes, the situation sucks and was a huge mistake, but I don't think it would have mattered if that family were white.

The only reason I feel that way is that the police were completely apologetic on the spot once they found out that it was a huge mistake. It leads me to believe that they didn't act out of malice or bias. I will leave the door open to change my opinion though, because I didn't watch the body camera video and I wasn't there.