Why does the Washington Post refuse to publish the race of crime suspects?

[Anonymous]

They published the police report almost verbatim except they excluded any race of the suspects but in the police report and our local listserves the race of the suspects are stated. Is this the Post just being extremely PC? The description at this point is foolish.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121007448.html

[Anonymous]

?!?!

Maybe the witnesses could not determine the race of the suspect in this particular case?

I look at the Post police report summaries for trends in areas near me. I don't need to know the race of someone to do that.

[Anonymous]

It's only relevant if the suspects haven't been caught and the police are asking for the community's assistance in locating the perpetrator. Otherwise it's totally irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

ITTTA ! We must be general neighbors, because I read the same listservs and thought to myself, 'great, now I actually know who to look out for when walking my Lab at 9 pm.'

The listserv blurb I'm thinking of had race, yes, and also other characteristics such as hairstyle, coat, and something else.

Anyway, to answer your question, yes the Post editors are being deliberate and PC in their decision to skip race or just skin hue ("dark complected; fair complexion") in this kind of frequent blurb. Years ago the ombudsman offered some weak rationale as to why. Like it would cause a witchhunt of all fair skinned, red haired men if they included THAT detail along with the fact that the assailant was 26 y.o.

So what we're left with is looking for a guy whose 26 years old and average build. And drives a car with any of the darker paint colors. Gee thanks.

[Anonymous]

It's only relevant if the suspects haven't been caught and the police are asking for the community's assistance in locating the perpetrator.

That is the case here, and the neighborhood listservs say as much in quotes from MPD.

Presumably, the Post line editors received the same alerts from MPD blast communications and chose to edit them down to exclude several details. Such as skin tone.

[Anonymous]

From www.vdare.com

"I Don’t Think It Does Race"—The Rise Of Raceless Police Suspect Sketches

By Nicholas Stix
In 1946, the New York Times gave the world the "raceless" perpetrator. With its decision to refuse to provide readers with the second type of information that police list about an assailant (after "sex"), the “newspaper of record” combined an implicit acknowledgement of blacks’ astronomically high crime rates with proto-Political Correctness.

As is so often the case, eventually the rest of the press embraced the Times’ vice—to the point where "not reporting race" is now a major VDARE.com blog category.

Some years ago, the press extended its refusal to describe "black" perpetrators to Hispanic ones. And when one media outlet failed to toe the line, and made the PC error of trying to help protect the public from heinous criminals such as Arizona’s "Chandler Rapist," Spanish-language radio outfit New Radio Venture/KMYL (1190 AM) demanded that it cease and desist.

(On March 1, illegal immigrant Santana Batiz-Aceves, aka Ricardo Ramirez Lopez, aka Chaparro , aka Shorty, whose history included two deportations following drug arrests, pleaded guilty to raping five girls between 12 and 15 years of age, and was sentenced to 168 years in prison—no thanks to Hispanic chauvinist and New Radio Venture VP Mayra Nieves who had asked the police not to describe the attacker as Hispanic.)

Periodically, I check into who exactly is responsible for not reporting an assailant’s race. Usually, the police will give the full description they received from victims and/or witnesses, and the newspaper or TV news censors it. For example, this was the pattern in Seattle’s "Tuba Man" and James Paroline racial murders and with the Choral Society of Durham, NC burglar.

Until now, the only time that I have been able to catch police deliberately misleading the public about an as yet unsolved black-on-white crime was in the case of the racist, black homosexual Baytown, TX serial kidnapper-rapist.

Read the rest at http://www.vdare.com/stix/100629_raceless.htm

[Anonymous]

Because they're overwhelmingly AA?

[Anonymous]

We wouldn't want to look like we're discriminating. Even though we are trying to catch A GD CRIMINAL! Tells you how slanted the Post is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ITTTA ! We must be general neighbors, because I read the same listservs and thought to myself, 'great, now I actually know who to look out for when walking my Lab at 9 pm.'

The listserv blurb I'm thinking of had race, yes, and also other characteristics such as hairstyle, coat, and something else.

Anyway, to answer your question, yes the Post editors are being deliberate and PC in their decision to skip race or just skin hue ("dark complected; fair complexion") in this kind of frequent blurb. Years ago the ombudsman offered some weak rationale as to why. Like it would cause a witchhunt of all fair skinned, red haired men if they included THAT detail along with the fact that the assailant was 26 y.o.

So what we're left with is looking for a guy whose 26 years old and average build. And drives a car with any of the darker paint colors. Gee thanks.

And knowing that teh suspect was Black/Hispanic/or red haired would really be helpful to the general public how? Certainly not much more of an identifier.
Come on.

[Anonymous]

And knowing that teh suspect was Black/Hispanic/or red haired would really be helpful to the general public how? Certainly not much more of an identifier.
Come on.

Hm. You come on.

It's a basic scientific deductive principal that the more identifying information you posses about a thing, the more likely you are to be able to correctly name what it is. Or in this instance, apprehend a person. You learned that in 7th grade biology, right?

So again, you come on. Tell everyone why it's a good idea to censor the dissemination of a trait that would exclude 50% to 95% of the population. Maybe the Post should just rewrite the communication and leave out the gender, too! What good does it do people on the lookout to know whether it was a man or woman, right? "Police are looking for a person who XYZ. If you see a person, please notify authorities."

[Anonymous]

18:23 - Awesome. That is the Post's next approach, I hear. Just in case the Post isn't useless enough as it is.