I saw that video yesterday. It was typical and typically appalling. I just have no words anymore for this crap.
Example of how to be technically correct and completely wrong…
The solution to this type of stuff is simple - everyone shows an ID all the time - even if they are well known to security. That is the way most private companies with ID/badge entry requirements work. No one, not even the CEO, gets in if they do not show their badge. You forget it, you get a temporary one by showing some form of ID before you are allowed admittance. While this may sound intrusive (show your papers), it ensures everyone is treated the same and becomes 2nd nature before long.
He must’ve violated a Barnard College rule against being black in public.
Barnard President Sian Leah Beilock:
What has come across is a pervasive sense that racial bias remains pernicious on our campus.
The incident isn’t her fault but she does seem a little naïve.
And her Wikipedia entry makes this ironic observation:
Beilock’s research relates to educational practice and policy. Her work demonstrates that students’ attitudes and anxieties (as well as those of their teachers) are critical to student success. In her work, she has developed simple psychological interventions to help people perform their best under stress.
I worked for 3 firms that required showing an ID as you suggest. It was routine for people to flash ANYTHING as they walked past the security officer. I don’t know of a single time anyone was stopped. Even as a COO, I was expected to show my badge, never did and was never once questioned even when entering a building for maybe the 3rd time in a year.
Same here. For maybe the first couple months there was badge-flashing, and then just a wave. Yeah, I’m a medium-height white guy with no visible tattoos and a boring haircut.
(Really serious security, on the other hand, can be almost completely unobtrusive. Decades ago, when my father worked in a serious-security job, my sister went to visit him and the guard at the front desk greeted her by name (she’d been in the building exactly once before) and pointed her in the right direction. Yep, they had pictures of staff family members, and security was supposed to memorize them all.)
“Barnard College told students that it would hold a listening session on campus “.
I want to assume that the people who come up with ideas like this have good intentions behind it. And I want to suppress the cynicism that immediately suspects whoever is calling for a “listening session” is mostly trying cover their ass PR wise and prolong whichever provosty-vice-presidenty-dean-of-whatever job they currently hold. Hopefully sessions like this provide minority students—who have very good reason to feel persecuted by campus cops—with a chance to vent their frustrations to leadership.
However, I seriously doubt any of the officers in question, or other campus authorities with power to detain, expel and arrest, will be compelled to attend. So who’s doing the listening? And what concrete solutions come from it? “Don’t make immediate assumptions based on race” is a good message, but will anyone really be there who doesn’t already get that?
Wow - couldn’t be more different at my firm. Things may have changed with all the recent security threats (physical and cyber), but we take security very seriously - and have for a while. We are in the private sector only (no gov’t or healthcare related work) but still take it very seriously. We fired a long time, highly rated employee recently who gave her access badge to a non-employee friend to allow temporary access. Right in our handbook - all employees are required to display their badge, and if not for whatever reason (tucked in your purse, behind your suit jacket), required to show it for any employee who asks. We have no issues. The rules are the same for everyone, from Janitor to CEO.
An illustrative tale… Years ago, my boss and I, two white guys in suits, took a cab from our offices in NW DC to an Army base on the other side of town. At the gate, there was much checking of our ID’s, calling ahead to determine that we did, indeed, have an appointment, and so on. Satisfied, they waved us in, and the cab took us to the building we were headed for. The guards never even looked at the cab driver, whose “back of the seat” ID had a very Farsi name on it. It was like a replay of the old “smuggling wheelbarrows” joke.
Security guys are usually not very bright.
I can agree with that. My wife worked for —redacted— for about a decade. I’d been there once the previous year, and they greeted me by name before I even had a chance to show my id. I was escorted by a charming broad shouldered woman in a dark unadorned uniform to the correct floor and office, and in the elevator, I jokingly asked if she was carrying a gun. She just smiled and said nothing. The security was completely unobtrusive and so polite. I later found out exactly what you said, they had a photos of me, my car, and even knew my latest hair color, which I changed all the time way back then. It felt a lot more secure and pleasant than suspicious scowling uniformed police officer marching me up to my wife’s office.
Or maybe you screen public safety hires more carefully and have yearly training and certification for diversity training. You know, expect cops not to be jerks.
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You get what you pay for.
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I hope McNab gets a Harvard lawyer.
I sincerely believe many white guys go into police work specifically because they believe blacks are crime prone, want to be violent toward them and think being police will enable to get away with it. Which I also believe a large percent do.
Only the camera saved this man from a beating- and nothing else.
The OIC looked at the camera twice before changing his physical approach.
Like any profession there are bad actors who come along specifically take a job just to do ill.
The same reason one man becomes a priest to access children another becomes a policeman to commit consequence-free violence on the innocent.
The college might need one, too!
I put myself through college as a debater. One tournament at OSU in Norman, OK a campus police officer pulled his gun on my and my debate team partner. A buddy of ours had texted my partners girlfriend a bunch of stuff as my partner and he found out and got furious and started yelling at our buddy.
We thought it was a pretty funny event, until some god damn idiot cop pulled a fucking gun on us. He has that pointed it at us while screaming the whole time for no fucking reason for over five full minutes while we “investigated our story”. We didn’t even know the jackass showed up and he thought we were in full business suits with double Windsor knotted ties fist fighting for some harebrained reason, which we weren’t, but even if we were, why the fuck would you pull a god damn gun on someone and risk killing them or them taking that gun away and using it you.
I completely understand why people in any community hate and distrust cop. In my experience they can’t ever help you, but they sure as shit can almost shot your ass for nothing or worst some shit they make up in their head.
And this doesn’t even touch cops who plant evidence or the massive number of rapists that are also cops.
He was blacting very suspiciously.
Fuck, I can’t even enjoy my stupid joke. This guy lives in a much crappier version of America than most of us have to live in, and it isn’t because of any choices he’s made or actions he’s taken.