What the Arrest of Daniel Penny is All About

Here Weissberg recounts the Smith College custodian who reported a black student who appeared "out of place" at Tyler Hall.

He concludes by suggesting "the word may get out to black criminals that Smith College offers easy pickin's", from shoplifting to sexual assault, that may culminate in rape: "We may have to wait until some future Smith co-ed sues her school (and its president, personally) after a brutal rape":

In New York City, where I live, the "If you see something, say something" signs are ubiquitous. Certainly sound advice, at least in the abstract, as regards the war on terror and criminality. Unfortunately, in settings obsessing over the feelings of certain minority groups, alerting the authorities about apparent suspicious behavior can be personally risky. Indeed, save in extreme situations, it's best to keep quiet or quickly flee the scene.
To understand this troubling situation, consider that to the trained eye (particularly police officers' eyes), suspicious behavior is nearly everywhere. An especially common example is people who appear out of place or at least cannot offer credible explanations for their presence. How should the police react when encountering at 5:00 A.M. a well dressed German tourist in a black neighborhood notorious for drug-dealers and hookers? One can only reasonably surmise that absent any compelling explanation, these out-of-place folks are up to no good, an assessment that would justify asking them – perhaps forcefully – to move on lest bad things happen.
Particularly valuable for picking out troublemakers early is "odd" behavior, behavior that somehow intuitively does not fit. It is difficult to define "odd" behavior legally, but it is not all that hard to sense it. Remember the Philadelphia blacks in Starbucks? Retail clerks cannot help but notice a customer who meanders about the store just prior to closing – he's probably waiting until all the customers leave and the clerks will be busy counting the day's cash.
So far, everything is simple. What complicates this "if you see something..." message is when race and ethnicity enter the picture, plus the existence of organizations that thrive on turning molehills into lucrative mountains thanks to false accusations. It is one thing to call security when a slovenly dressed white male repeatedly visits Tiffany's asking to handle expensive diamond rings without buying anything, but the same behavior from a poorly dressed black man is not comparable. Putting "a tail" on the white customer is just prudent security; doing the same for the black "customer" is easily construed as racial profiling, an invitation to public outrage and possible lawsuits.
A recent incident at Smith College, an upscale women's school, perfectly illustrates what happens when calling security about possible suspicious behavior gone terribly wrong if a black is involved. The facts are simple: a school custodian alerted campus police when he saw a black student, Oumou Kanoute, eating lunch in a residence hall living room, not the nearby air-conditioned dining room. To the custodian, this seemed out of place...
More important, the outcomes of these false positive "say something" incidents will gain wider circulation, given their potential career-ending impact, and thus few will risk saying anything, save, perhaps, calling about an ongoing shooting. Why risk your job if the odds of identifying a troublemaking are 500 to 1? And, conceivably, the word may get out to black criminals that Smith College offers easy pickin's, from shoplifting to sexual assault, since everybody is terrified about reporting anything that might alarm security.
It remains to be seen just how far this trend of selective "say something" will go, but it's unlikely that it will reverse course until it results in a major catastrophe. We may have to wait until some future Smith co-ed sues her school (and its president, personally) after a brutal rape for failing to supply the most minimal protection when the circumstances clearly required it. In the meantime, political correctness slowly moves beyond just debating "offensive" language to threatening public safety." -- Robert Weissberg, American Thinker, November 3, 2018

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