So, expanding on my post from Wednesday, we can add “going to the bank while black” to the list of things you can be detained by police for.
Jason Goolsby stood outside a bank on Pennsylvania Avenue SE on Monday evening pondering whether to withdraw money from the ATM. The teen said a woman pushing a baby stroller approached, and he held the vestibule door open for her.
The 18-year-old, who was with two friends, lingered about 20 seconds outside the Citibank near Eastern Market on Capitol Hill before leaving. Moments later, Goolsby said, he saw D.C. police cars racing toward him. One, he said, nearly hit him. The college freshman said he ran.
Three blocks away near Barracks Row, officers caught him. One of his friends recorded the tail end of Goolsby’s forceful detention — two white police officers on top of the screaming black teenager, trying to force his hands to his back while saying, “Stop resisting.” The friend aiming the cellphone camera repeatedly yelled, “He didn’t do anything.”
Goolsby didn’t know that he and his friends had been suspected of casing the ATM for a possible robbery. A caller to 911 reported suspicious youths loitering at the bank’s entrance and according to a transcript of her call made available Wednesday, said, “we just left but we felt like if we had taken money out we might’ve gotten robbed.”
Only this time, Black Lives Matter was protesting the bank the next day, the cops let Goolsby go, and the video of the police went online.
One of Goolsby’s former high school teachers, Erika Totten, is a District activist and leader in the Black Lives Matter movement. She was front and center at Tuesday’s protest, and she called Goolsby “one of the sweetest kids I’ve had the honor of teaching.” She said: “If you’re black, you’re an automatic threat. That’s the reality of the world we live in, and it’s supported by the justice system.
Totten added, “White fear of a black boy caused that.”
This time didn’t end in tragedy. This time.
West of the Cascades
This is Thought Crime enforcement. It’s disgusting, and people who make reports like this should be as accountable as the police who react insanely. I’m not sure how we do that, but there should be some way to seek redress against individuals who discriminate in this way.
Howlin Wolfe
Of course, being white, I think, why did he run? Then I remember Tamir Rice and the tennis star, James Blake, who didn’t run. Blake survived, but Tamir didn’t even know what hit him. I can’t fault a black person for running when the cops are after him or her, innocent or not, because you never know what kind of cop is after you.
Botsplainer
Cultural conditioning of white folks is incredibly powerful. My mom is especially bad.
MomSense
OH MY GOD! It’s like the Crawford and Rice cases where white fright leads to death by 911 call.
He is so lucky but surviving an encounter with a police officer shouldn’t be a matter of luck.
Served
Someone called 911 for this? How is that situation an emergency?!
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“There are black people outside.”
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Botsplainer: It’s almost like being autistic is a help here. I don’t ever understand what people are doing, so black people don’t seem any more suspicious than anyone else does.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
Terrible. I don’t understand this mindset. I don’t understand this prejudice that sees someone black and automatically thinks they’re up to no good.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Served: That was my reaction.
Botsplainer
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
It is truly amazing to hear just how many things she can lay at the feet of people of color.
Brachiator
But as we know from Ted Cruz, BLM is all about cop killing.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/10/14/3712373/ted-cruz-black-lives-matter/
Betty Cracker
I don’t think it’s crazy to see young men (of any color) hanging around an ATM and decide not to withdraw money because you don’t feel safe. But it IS crazy to call the cops on them if they haven’t done anything, and it’s disgraceful that the cops took that baseless suspicion seriously.
singfoom
@Brachiator: This is my favorite part of that giant glob of bullshit Cruz just spoke:
Yes, the police are so afraid of the protesters. Afraid that the protesters might escalate the situation and shoot the police if the police don’t comply with the protesters orders fast enough or in the way the protesters expect.
Somedays I feel like I live on a different planet that some of my fellow citizens.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
The rest of the officers at my usual post have recognized that I was the affirmative action liberal hire and, for the most part, just don’t bring up politics anymore. But I worked a different post (a Twins game, which I wil never do again) one night a few weeks ago and got to listen to the post supervisor go on at length about how evil and stupid BLM is, while talking with a group of Minneapolis cops there to work the game, too. Given the situation, I just kept my mouth shut, since I’d have been outnumbered 7-1 and all I really wanted was just to be done with the stupid shift and go home. It was pretty appalling.
mdblanche
@Served: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTXYwBqXbcA
sparrow
What the fuck is wrong with people? If I see someone legitimately being suspicious, like trying door handles of multiple cars to look for unlocked ones, I still probably wouldn’t call the cops, because I live in Baltimore and I don’t want to be responsible for a summary execution for something pretty freaking minor in the grand scheme of the Universe.
Belafon
@Served: They need to add a page to the 911 manual:
“This is 911”
“Yes, there are some black men standing outside a bank, and they scared me”
“Were they doing anything?”
“Not yet, but they were acting suspicious.”
“What race are you?”
“White.”
“Can I get your location, so we can send someone to educate you?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can see police responding to this– I think police are required to respond to 911 calls in a lot of jurisdictions?– but “nothing happened but we think it could have if…” requires multiple cars? Not clear from the article if they came in with lights and sirens
Brachiator
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Your comment stopped me in my tracks, really made me think about not interpreting actions, not interpreting actions positively or negatively.
Thank you.
JasonF
Earlier this week, another story broke here in DC on a similar topic:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/the-secret-surveillance-of-suspicious-blacks-in-one-of-the-nations-poshest-neighborhoods/2015/10/13/2e47236c-6c4d-11e5-b31c-d80d62b53e28_story.html
For those not familiar with DC geography, Eastern Market, where Mr. Goolsby was arrested, is in a portion of DC that has historically been poor and black, and in the last decade or so had become somewhat gentrified, though still has its share of poor black residents. Georgetown, where the WaPo story I just linked to takes place, has been predominantly white and very wealthy for as long as there has been a DC.
scav
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, if one doesn’r respond with multiple sirens and guns blazing, how does one demonstrate the existence of ‘effective policing”? It’s the sizzle that keeps the force in funds with lots of boys toys flowing in.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If cities still did foot or even bicycle patrols, you could radio the cop(s) in that general area to wander down and walk up and down the block a few times to discourage any bad behavior. But, no, since all patrolling must be done from inside a car, you have to send a few racing over there to see if *maybe* a crime happened in the five or ten minutes between the call and the radio dispatch.
A few months ago, somebody posted a “Dear White People”-type post from an (anonymous) cop that was basically, Please stop calling the cops every time your black neighbor is looking at his own car. It wastes my time and it’s embarrassing for all of us for me to have to question a guy who’s just minding his own business. Stop being racist.
bluehill
Then there’s this guy – MMA Fighter ‘Mayhem’ Miller Arrested After Another Brawl With Cops
http://laist.com/2015/10/16/mayhem_miller_arrested_again.php
He’s still alive. I wonder why?
Mike in NC
@Brachiator: So Cruz calls the Obama administration giving away billions of dollars worth of surplus military gear to police departments across the country, “vilification of law enforcement”? OK, got it.
raven
Any word from Corner? Any other BJ’ers from Huston?
gex
It’s almost like cops are trained to yell “Stop resisting” regardless of a person’s actions. By a slimy lawyer type who knows that having that on the video is all it will take to get a DA or a grand jury or in the rarest of occasions an actual jury to decide that whatever the cop did was justified. It’s the Get Out of Jail Free card for fascist police everywhere.
ruemara
You have enough to go home, but you’d like to grab something with your boys. You go to the ATM, but you think about it, yeah there’s that bill coming and you need to make sure you have enough left over for rent. So, you leave. On your way out, you hold open a door for a lady with a baby. You and your friends talk a bit outside on what next if you’re not hitting a restaurant. Next thing you know, cop cars pull up. You freak because cops are crazy & run. Now you’re under arrest. Why? A white person was afraid of you going about your legitimate business. And most of them will focus on why didn’t you run and well, you were loitering.
Another day in post racial America, folks.
Poopyman
@Served:
But it’s so rare for Southeast DC!
(Note for the uninformed: No, no it’s not. See JasonF above.)
msdc
@JasonF:
Georgetown used to have a large black population and a large number of poor residents from the 19th century to the 1930s. It’s been white and wealthy in living memory, though.
gvg
Speaking of conditioning…..women are conditioned to view unknown men (not just black men) as potential rapists, and it leaves us fearful. Night time near an ATM is especially bad. Can’t even count or remember how many times I was lectured, public service announcements aimed at this issue, gossip, news etc. I know it makes me unfairly jumpy. Unfair to all the harmless men but rape does actually happen so its hard to stop the fear when you have been trained that way.
The quoted call is racist fears but I wonder about the environment they grew up in. I know my fear is overblown though and I don’t call 911 everytime nothing happens. you are supposed to remain alert not sick the law on everyone.
Quite a few people also become extremely irrational after dark too. I recall a striking story where an older white woman living alone became paranoid after dark and shot at police who had been sent to check on her. They shot back and killed her. News interviewed her neighbors and friends and it turned out people had noticed how afraid she became after dark. It seemed like no one really knew what to do about it or if they should do anything before anything happened. I think this is also conditioning. Teaching caution is one thing, but it can go too far.
Do 911 operators seem to be less trained than they used to be? Seems to me I heard in some places it was contracted out to Indian call centers and people at the time were saying that was dangerous because they wouldn’t know the streets and locations well enough, then I didn’t hear anything further. The last time I called (to report a car had driven off the road) the lady didn’t sound foreign and did know the area. Several stories lately have involved 911 not having enough sense though. I’ll bet the training is being done cheaper though.
Jeffro
Wow…the NYT is on it in regards to what the rich get away with these days…first the article on those top 158 families who are making most of the primary donations thus far, and now this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-to-a-tax-increase-for-the-rich.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
LOVE IT
SatanicPanic
We need PSAs that say “if you call police on black youths, be careful, because you might get them killed… the more you know” so people with sub-conscious racism can consider whether or not they want blood on their hands.
JasonF
@msdc: I guess my ignorance of DC history is showing. I thought even back in the day, Georgetown was where the Washington elite — which, until 40 or 50 years ago, was by definition white (not that it’s all that diverse today) — chose to live. Thanks for correcting my misperception!
SatanicPanic
WTF do they mean by “casing” an ATM anyway?
Just think about fucking dumb you have to be to think that there is some way to look at an ATM and tell if there’s money inside. Is this another example of white people thinking black people have magic powers?
ETA- or are they suggesting some kids are going to stand around robbing people in front of an open bank? WTF people. This caller should have their phone privileges revoked.
greennotGreen
@gvg: No, I think 911 operators have been bad for a long time.
Thirty-six years ago, I was recently divorced and had moved into a new (old) apartment. Late at night I was alone, working in the kitchen that faced the alley. I saw a light in the back yard. It was a guy shining a flashlight on his naked genitals. I was pretty freaked and called 911, told them there was a flasher in my backyard, that I was alone and scared. Two officers came to my door reasonably promptly, and tried to assure me that it was just probably someone who had wandered in off the alley.
“With no pants on?!” I interrobanged.
Apparently, the 911 operator had omitted that little detail.
ET
I live on Capitol Hill and I have to tell you this so doesn’t surprise me. There is this sense by the newer and whiter residents of the Hill that they are living in such a dangerous place and all browns (particularly males) are to be feared because most of them are up to no good (and just be suspicious of them all to be on the safe side). There was a thread on a local listserv about how the Hill seem to be living in a “reign of terror” (and those aren’t my words in quotes but the title of the post) just aver some admittedly bad things had happened on one night. It won’t surprise anyone to know that the danger is the browns – any browns. The police always say if you feel scared or someone is suspicious call 911 and people take it to heart. But while a white person “doing” what that guy was “doing” wouldn’t have been considered suspicious, a brown “doing” the same thing would to the newer, whiter residents for no other reason than race. Hence the phone call and the unfortunate events that followed. My cynical take on many of these residents is that they grew up in all what enclaves in suburban America with houses with manicured lawns and no one walked anywhere. They expected Mayberry or some close facsimile thereof now that they (and those like them) lived in the neighborhood and instead got the real world.
I doubt it occurred to the person (not that they cared) that called 911 that the person they were scared of was more afraid of the police than the caller was about the person they were scared of. After all if you didn’t do anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about and only guilty people run? Right?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ET:
I have no problem labeling those people as assholes, because I did grow up in a lily-white suburb and moved to Los Angeles to go to school, and I managed not to call 911 every time I saw a black person outside my apartment even though my school was in South Central LA. Yes, I had a lot of stereotypes in my head that I had to work through (and I will probably be working through the rest of them till my dying day), but I realize that those stereotypes are my problem to deal with and not something I should impose on the people around me.
msdc
@JasonF: Oh, it was definitely home to the Washington elite, too. You go far enough back, most of the black residents of Georgetown were the property of those elites. But the neighborhood had a sizable black population and a sizable poor population (overlapping, but not identical) until the late 1930s. The New Deal and the war effort brought lots of new residents to town, and property values started pricing poor people out of Georgetown. Many of them moved over to Southeast, which actually had working-class white neighborhoods well into the 1950s and 60s. The demographics have completely flipped from what they were 70, 80 years ago.
(/the more you know)
Shakezula
This is one of the many pleasures of gentrification. White people move into an area that has traditionally been occupied by minorities and the whites see the long term residents as invaders.
Glad to see Erika Totten was interviewed, she’s awesome.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@bluehill: Actually, so am I.
RSR
via @jpegjoshua, here’s another one for you:
POLICE ALMOST KICK OUT JOURNALIST FOR BEING BLACK AT DISCUSSION ON POLICING
http://deviantphilly.com/2015/10/14/police-almost-kick-out-journalist-for-being-black-at-discussion-on-policing/
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@raven: What’s going on in Houston? We’re waiting out the flash flood warnings in SoCal, trying to figure out how to get back to Seattle if the I-5 is still flooded tomorrow. Our cabin is inside the flash flood area but not in imminent danger.
Woodrowfan
I don’t like if I see someone hanging outside near an ATM either, especially one that’s on the street. But I don’t f-ing call 911! I’m just careful when I get my money, or find another ATM. A lot of the banks downtown have them inside a vestibule in the entrance if you don’t want to use one on the street. And Penn Avenue? Cripes, there are people everywhere. It’s not like being alone on the street at 2 am. And if you’re afraid of African Americans DC is not the place to hang out. Go hang out in Leesburg or Great Falls…..
Jackie Chiles
Grew up in DC, went to school three blocks from where this took place and currently work about a mile from the Citibank branch in question.
This is:
1. not atypical for DC at all. I’ve been denied entry into tony boutiques because of my race (I’m black) and apparently as a skinny, looking 13 year old (I’m more Steve Urkel than 50 Cent) who wanted to use his summer job money to buy his mother a nice present for her birthday, very, very scary.
2. SOP for the cops and for youth who fear them. I can recall several instances in my youth in which the police were called because me and my friends had congregated in the same place for more than 2-3 minutes. One minute you are standing somewhere, trying to decide whether or not to go the movies or the video arcade, the next thing you know the regular cops or even worse, the “Jump Outs” aka squads of paramilitary cops who would often approach people in unmarked vans, leaping out without warning (thus their name which was given to them by kids in the ‘hoo’d) would be on you like white on rice. Both were know to rough up, beat and sometimes kill anyone suspected of a crime, so you had to make a choice: Stay put and hope they believe you when explain that aren’t a criminal OR flee and hope to get away. More often than not I’d run, zig-zagging and praying I didn’t get a bullet in the back. I was always lucky. Some people I knew weren’t.
More on Jump Outs” http://www.newsweek.com/jump-outs-dcs-scarier-version-stop-and-frisk-300151
This kid is lucky to be alive.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Woodrowfan: I’ve only been afraid at an ATM once in my life, and it was a white guy in his 40s crowding me at one outside the bank, on a day when the area was deserted. I turned and barked at him, “PLEASE STEP BACK!” , just an automatic response and the Voice is left over from working as a substitute teacher (I’m all of 5’3″). He did, I got my $20 to go to lunch with my best friend, and then sat in my car and shook for 5 minutes as it hit me.
Woodrowfan
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): I’m not afraid, I just don’t like it. But what you described would creep me out too in a deserted area.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Jackie Chiles: I was thinking he was lucky to be alive, too.
My favorite baseball player is Torii Hunter, a much-beloved person in Anaheim and other points behind the Orange Curtain, and a very recognizable guy especially in 2012, the year this took place: http://nesn.com/2012/04/torii-hunter-held-at-gun-point-by-police-outside-his-home/
Torii is back with the Twins and I no longer live in the area, but I am still angry about this.
Afterwards, Torii told his Twitter followers that it was ok.
What got me was the bit that’s missing from this particular article. They didn’t believe him when he told them his name, and they wouldn’t let him go back inside to get his wallet to prove it. Afterwards, one of the cops says he’s a big fan of the team, but if he was he would have recognized Torii because his face was plastered on banners all over Anaheim as well as huge portraits of him on the stadium at the entrance. He’s not one of those guys who looks remarkably different without his baseball cap on.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Woodrowfan: it’s funny but I was only aware that I was afraid after it was over, which is why I was shaking for 5 minutes. When it happened I just felt very angry and let it out. Heh.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
So what is the cop’s thinking here? If the kid in this story had mearly been excersing his Second Admendment Rights there would have been a shoot out because the way the cops painiced the kid and very likely both the kid and an officer would be dead or injured. Do we have a problem with adrialin junky cops?
Woodrowfan
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): heh. :) the teacher voice comes in handy, does it not.,
Matt McIrvin
Stories like this are like lighting up the Richard Cohen-signal. I’m waiting with dread.
Watchman
Sure is terrible to judge someone without knowing all the facts.
For instance, you all think Zandar is a good person and not an abusive, misogynist tech bro who thinks as a black man that he’s immune to being called out for his actions.
You believe that because none of you have had the unfortunate fate of being his co-worker at some point, and you are not in possession of all the facts.
You didn’t for instance witness a young woman scared for her life find out that Zandar had only been suspended for a week from his job for sexual harassment and that she had to go back to work with him for six more months.
You didn’t experience his unwanted advances that caused two different women network engineers who were promoted over him to quit the position rather than deal with him.
You didn’t smell his stench from him not being able to wipe his fat ass that caused the entire office to implement measures to cover it up because they were afraid of what he would do if he was fired.
You weren’t at the meeting where the decision was made to fire him and grant severance and not contest his unemployment claim even though he was terminated with ample cause and shouldn’t have gotten a fucking dime.
So yes, how awful that anyone would make assumptions about how dangerous a black man could be just standing nearby.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Watchman:
Dude. You need serious psychological help. You are so obsessed about a FORMER co-worker that you feel compelled to come here and harass him EVERY TIME HE POSTS.
At this point, the only person who looks crazy here is you, because you are unable to let go of events from, what, 5 years ago at least?
Get help. Find a therapist. Do some work on yourself to figure out why you can’t let this go. I hate to be Freudian, but if it *doesn’t* turn out that Zandar subconsciously reminds you of your abusive, abandoning, and/or asshole father, I will be astounded. Your reaction really is that unhinged and extreme.