A teenager in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., was allegedly pepper-sprayed in the face by police Monday who mistook him for a burglar in the home of his white foster family, reported television station WTVD.
A neighbor reportedly alerted police to a break-in after seeing 18-year-old DeShawn Currie walk into the home. Currie has lived there with his white foster parents Ricky and Stacy Tyler and their three younger children since they moved to Fuquay-Varina in July, reported WTVD.
Three police officers responded to the alleged break-in and entered the home, surprising Currie.
“They was like, ‘Put your hands on the door,'” Currie said. “I was like, ‘For what? This is my house.’ I was like, ‘Why are y’all in here?'”
Currie told the TV station that he got upset when officers pointed to photos of his three younger siblings and noted that he wasn’t pictured. After arguing with the police that he was in his own home, the police allegedly pepper-sprayed him in the face, according to WTVD.
When Stacy Tyler got home, Currie was being treated in the driveway by emergency medical services. Tyler reportedly cleared up the confusion with the police officers, but the whole family has been affected by the incident.
***The police also told the TV station that the neighborhood has recently been the target of criminal activity.
And the criminal activity is armed thugs breaking into houses and pepper spraying the residents. On the upside, they didn’t shoot him.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
To be black in America is to live with society’s constant assumption of your own criminality.
Baud
Roger Moore
While most of the emphasis is on the bad job done by the police, it’s worth pointing out that the neighbors started the whole thing by reporting the kid going home as a break-in. He had been living their for 3 months, the neighbors were enough of busybodies to call the cops over a possible break-in, and yet they hadn’t noticed that one of the kids was black. Seriously? Seriously?
beth
One of the articles I read about this said they’d been fostering him for over a year. You mean no one noticed him going in and out of the house in all that time?
Villago Delenda Est
Yes. Yes indeed.
The Rolling Stones were right.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
You can’t always get what you want?
JPL
@Roger Moore: I agree but there are no laws to charge them with. One has to feel bad for the foster parents who tried to teach him trust after so many years of non trust. I just don’t think they can start again. It’s not like the Blind Side.
El Caganer
@Roger Moore: Gee, you might almost think they were sending a message. Whatever could it be?
beth
@Roger Moore: When I lived in Tennessee, black friends of mine who were in town visiting relatives stopped by on their way to church to say hello. We weren’t home and a neighbor called the cops to report black people trying to break in. We couldn’t believe it when our friends came back later still dressed in their church clothes (him in a suit, her in a dress and heels). We were like “you thought these well dressed folks ringing the doorbell early Sunday morning were burglars?”
scav
@Roger Moore: They could very well have known, just pulling in a little strong-arm muscle to make perfectly clear who is and is not welcome in their blessed oasis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: No. The doctor has no face.
Hungry Joe
What neighborhood HASN’T “recently been the target of criminal activity”? The terms aren’t defined. Mass murder last night, just down the block? Potted-plant theft half a mile away, two weeks ago? It’s an excuse for the police to go in full-bore, anywhere, any time.
Still, the person in the house didn’t look like the people in the pictures. Not excusing the cops — their behavior was outrageous — but it’s a little bit gray, at least. I mean, they have to answer a burglary call, right?
jl
It is unclear to my what the kid was doing that justified police directions to immediately do things like put his hands on the wall.
If he was a foster child, the police had access to, or it seems to me could have with a little thinking developed, more information than pictures on the wall. And family pictures may very likely not be relevant anyway for identifying a recent foster child.
Why did police directions necessarily include first thing quick like a bunny put your hands on the wall?
‘Could you please give us contact information for your foster parents so we can talk with them asap to resolve this’ is a police direction too.
Of course, that makes more sense, with less likelihood of creating a mess for no reason, and give less excuse to push a minority around, so I guess it was not the wisest course.
Edit: and I assume police know about organizations that place foster children? Do the police not know how the process works? I assume these agencies have phones.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Hungry Joe: Try to imagine this happening with white/black reversed. All I can picture is these cops saying “Are you okay? Did these black people in the photos attack you?”
Hungry Joe
@Bill E Pilgrim: As I said, their behavior was outrageous.
jl
@Hungry Joe: Yes they have to answer a burglary call. And they did answer the burglary call, the issue is how they decided to handle the situation as it developed while they were on the call.
Roger Moore makes a good point about the neighbors: were any of them being malicious in their reports, and maybe making stuff up? That would help explain the cops’ behavior, but I don’t think the simple fact it was a burglary call does.
RSA
@scav:
(Sarcasm noted.) Fuquay is about 20 minutes from my house; demographics are about the same as Raleigh and NC in general (in the neighborhood of 25% black residents). The only notable thing about the town IMHO is the presence of the Aviator Brewery and its brew pub.
greennotGreen
A few years ago some neighbors a few houses down had to move out for awhile so their house could be repaired following a fire. I didn’t know them, didn’t know how many people were in their family, only that they were black. I drove past one day and saw a black guy going at their storage unit lock with a hack saw, so I called the police. He probably scrammed after he realized that I had seen him. Maybe in the meantime his wife found the key.
Yes, I learned later that it was the husband.
I still think I would do the same thing today. After all, they’d just lost their house – now I’m going to let someone steal their stuff?
Over-reaction by the police is going to lead to less safe neighborhoods because people will be afraid to report small crimes. Someone stole my TV some time ago, but I wouldn’t want them to get killed for it.
Mike in NC
There you have it. If the foster parents had only changed his first name to Biff or Josh the cops wouldn’t have had a problem.
scav
@RSA: Apparently we are both so benighted as to fail utterly at recognizing the utter sublimity of the simple presence of the moi! making the phone call.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Hungry Joe: Not really disagreeing with you as much as it may have seemed, plus exaggerating for humor’s sake. I do think the neighbors are even more to blame in a way.
aimai
@jl: This is basically the same thing that happened to Skip Gates–guy is going into his own house and he’s rousted by the cops and they continue to give him a hard time in his own house.
It is apparently too much to ask our police forces to treat everyone with respect and courtesy rather than assuming that all black people are criminals or criminals in training. Look at the case of the guy who got tasered in the car. The car got stopped for a bullshit reason–because the driver didn’t have her seatbelt on. RAther than ticketing her and letting her go they turn the stop into an excuse to roust her passenger by demanding his ID which he didn’t have. There’s no law that says that passengers in cars have to be able to produce ID at any moment but because he couldn’t produce a Driver’s Lisence (fuck, I didn’t have a Driver’s lisence until I was 30!) they tasered the guy. How on earth can this be permitted to go on? I tremble before god at the treatment black people are enduring in this country.
mclaren
But I’ll bet the cops shot the family dog.
sempronia
Same thing happened to a friend of mine. He’s a clean-cut young black guy, ER doctor, originally from Haiti. He was visiting his white friend in Whittier, CA, and when his friend went out for some groceries, the old white lady next door called the cops on him. His friend came home to find his buddy in handcuffs on the floor, police goons everywhere. He kicked them out, went next door, and shouted at his neighbor for a while.
Hungry Joe
@jl: Re ” … the issue is how they decided to handle the situation as it developed while they were on the call.” I couldn’t agree more … which is why I said, twice, that “their behavior was outrageous.” (Now I’ve said it three times.) I merely wanted to add a little gray to the mix by pointing out that they were answering a burglary call, not randomly harassing a black person.
When I was about 14 I lost my house key and decided to crawl in a bedroom window. A cop car went by as I was half in, half out. I had no I.D. He listened to my story about how I lived there, then was in the process of putting me in the back seat of his squad car when our next-door-neighbor drove up and vouched for me. I was not pepper sprayed, or even handcuffed — this was a LONG time ago. Still, I didn’t think the cop was in the wrong. As for the cops in this story, well, for the fourth time, their behavior was outrageous.
Hungry Joe
@Bill E Pilgrim: You’re absolutely right: It’s more the neighbor’s fault. Still, the police’s behavior was … you know.
jl
@Hungry Joe: I didn’t mean to pound on you. But if the police could not ID the kid, why not treat him the way they treated you: take him down the station and he waits there until the situation is resolved? Why the unreasonable police demands? Did the kid try to make a run for it, what?
Sadly, from Roger Moore’s comment, neighbors may not have been honest if one was asked to vouch for the kid.
Howard Beale IV
@Baud: Now that’s a howler. Unfortunately, the fact that the text came out form a SCOTUS ruling ought to make folks think twice as to how well the references used in their rulings are really vetted.
glocksman
OT, but the stray cat I’ve been feeding since Sunday finally showed up at my door again.
Should I continue to feed him or should I let him hunt on his own?
Forgot to add that I’m in southwestern Indiana.
greennotGreen
@Hungry Joe: If the kid had been breaking into the house, I wouldn’t fault the neighbor, but walking into the house in the afternoon? How is that suspicious?
greennotGreen
@glocksman: Does the cat have a clipped ear? If so, it’s been neutered or spayed and released. Personally, I feed four strays to get them more use to my presence so I can get them into rescue and off the streets. If the cat is too wild for that, try a Havahart trap and at least get it examined, vaccinated, and neutered or spayed.
Booger
@Baud: I can’t get no satisfaction.
glocksman
@greennotGreen:
I don’t want to admit it. but if a non white child was ‘apparently’ breaking into a house of white people, I’d assume the worst.
That said, the cops should have had avenues of information available to them that indicated the ‘perp’ legally resided at that address.
Hungry Joe
@jl: They didn’t treat him like they treated me because he’s black and I’m white.
@greennotGreen: My comment above: “It was more the neighbor’s fault.”
I’m agreeing with everybody, but somehow I’m falling farther and farther behind. Time to withdraw with what little dignity I have left … which wasn’t much to begin with, so it’s not like I’m that far in the hole.
Howard Beale IV
@glocksman: See if there’s someway you can get him trapped to find out if he’s chipped or not. If he’s not chipped, best thing is to find some way to get the cat fixed and release him back into the wild. Also, what greenNotGreen said.
Poopyman
@Baud: What a drag it is getting old.
glocksman
@greennotGreen:
The cat is as close to domesticated as I can tell.
He doesn’t fear me and jumps up into my lap when I call him after he’s through eating.
I love cats and dogs, but the pet policy where I live is ‘No Pets’.
If I could own a pet, I would have kept the boxer I used to own.
jl
@Hungry Joe: Yes, I agree with that rationale, you are white and he is black. You are not in any hole as far as I’m concerned. I had to get in my quota of comments that nitpick on other comments today, otherwise Cole will send his blog thugs around to punch me in the neck and call me a loser.
WereBear
@glocksman: If he was getting a “buffet in the wild” he wouldn’t be showing up asking for help.
So help. :)
Winter is coming. His prey will be hibernating or flown south.
glocksman
@WereBear:
I’m glad to be of assistance, but if he freezes to death during winter, I’d like not to feel guilty about it.
WereBear
@glocksman: Okay. Is there a no-kill shelter in town?
JaneE
@Roger Moore: Exactly what I was thinking.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I see a red door and I want it painted black.
scav
Further investigation of links results in a mixed bag of updates and relateds. One, apparently the neighbor has apologized, so retraction there, but the PD has clammed up as is releasing no information about who was there, what orders weren’t followed or what crimes have occurred nearby — we’re just solemnly assured they are good people who don’t see race and wouldn’t do anything inappropriate ever. The AP did not apparently resort to pepper spraying them (namely Police Chief Larry Smith, two police captains and a police spokeswoman) when answers were not forthcoming.
But Two, as a pick-up on the side, WTF is up with FL — now the Correction Officers are joining in. Florida prison investigating death of female inmate ‘threatened’ by guard
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
The Police in New York City
Chased a boy right through the park
And in a case of mistaken identity
They put a bullet through his heart
amk
@scav: bingo.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: I don’t believe it. NYC cops aren’t marksmen and can’t get that accurate a shot.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Close. But I think it’s this:
Amir Khalid
@PurpleGirl:
Well, that song was written by two Englishmen. They may have gotten that detail wrong.
jw
@glocksman: Wha? It’s a Kitty. You must feed the Kitty! Everyone knows that.
zattarra
As a foster parent myself I’d like to call bs on the neighbors first of all. One of the first things we do when we get a new foster child is let the neighbors know so that something like this (calling the cops because you see a stranger entering/hanging around the house) doesn’t happen. We would do the same thing with any new neighborhood we moved in to. So how the heck do the neighbors not know that the white couple next door happen to have a black kid?
khead
I wonder what would’ve happened if the kid had, you know, stood his ground?
Omnes Omnibus
@khead: Rhetorical, right?
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course. Just can’t believe I was the first one to get there. The obvious snark involves the kid shooting the cops. I mean, it is his house.
jonas
@zattarra: I agree — as a former foster parent, too, I find it really hard to believe that the neighbor had been completely oblivious to the goings on next door for several weeks and then suddenly one day took a look over the fence and ‘OMG! a brown person! Going in to the house! Call the cops!” Bullshit. I remember quite vividly the over-the-fence conversation with my neighbor the day our foster kids were placed with us. The whole neighborhood knew — it was kind of an event.
MattR
Makes me wonder if the neighbors would have called the cops if a bunch of white people with a “moving van” started removing items from the house.
RaflW
every one of these cases needs to turn into a lawsuit. I generally hate saying things like the preceding sentence. But, even if the cops eventually prevail in even a majority of the cases, they still have to defend themselves, which costs money, staff time, etc.
Mayors are gonna get frustrated by that and start demanding better policing from their chiefs.
And for f*~ks sake, neigbors, you are being racist assholes.
MattR
@RaflW:
And if that doesn’t happen, the taxpayers will eventually get upset when their property taxes keep going up to cover those costs and they will vote in a new mayor who will demand better from the police. (at least in theory)
RaflW
@sempronia: If that were me, I’d also get in the car and drive to City Hall and yell at an aide to the mayor. The folks elected to ‘serve the people’ need to catch some actual heat when shit like that goes down.
barbequebob
@Howard Beale IV:
Cats in the wild kill all kinds of native wildlife, although the cats themselves are not native wildlife, they are are domesticed species, whose existence is largely subsidized by humans. We call them “subsidized predators”.
With all the things that are already contributing to the decline of our native wildlife, the last thing that our wildlife needs are predators like domestic cats, subsidized by humans. Folks should read a few of these articles and consider what their free ranging cats are doing to our native wildlife. It ain’t pretty.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/science/that-cuddly-kitty-of-yours-is-a-killer.html?_r=0
http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/120806.html
http://io9.com/5979891/domestic-cats-are-among-the-worst-invasive-species-and-could-be-destroying-ecosystems
Please read these and think about all the wild animals being endangered by free ranging cats.
Yours Sincerely,
BB, wildlife ecologist
Liquid
“You mean to tell me that, if I become a cop, I can murder black people AND get a two or three week paid vacation for it? Fuck, sign me up!”
dave
@sempronia: A guy I deployed with, a CPT, had been a LEO in Oklahoma he used to make it a point to take calls regarding black suspects in tony Suburbs. Essentially 99% of them were bullshit like being called on a guy in a suit walking his chihuahua who had moved in a few weeks ago. He took the calls because he didn’t trust the other officers to not escalate into violence or just general harassment . And he did his best to approach in a way that would shield the individual from feeling singled out. He eventually left the force because of the thin blue line shit. Guys a bit nuts but someone I respect immensely for his integrity but the point is he was an outlier and one that left the force because he didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. Also interesting because total right winger but it’s very strange because we actually agree on the 95% of where the problems lie but our solutions veer almost 180 degrees from each other. Puts me in mind of the environment that we grow up in really does have an impact on how we view the world.
Mnemosyne
@barbequebob:
Thank you for coming up with a reasonable argument that respects the fact that people do like cats. Way too many people go straight for the Cats are killers! Get rid of them! argument that doesn’t get us anywhere.
I love my cats, but they are not allowed outdoors except inside their carriers to go to the vet etc. because I know my adorable little fuzzballs are natural born killers that would decimate the local animal populations. I think most cat lovers would far prefer that cats currently living in feral colonies all live in nice, safe indoor homes, but quite often the irresponsibility of others who never bothered to spay/neuter their pets or abandoned them means we end up stuck with feral cats.