Ya gotta love Texas. Such a friendly helpful place. Helping that old man and his daughter like that. And a free ride a real police car too!

Hey, at least we're getting some stereotype diversity among police harassment victims.

He was going to a wedding.

The Old Man- Something Old
Black Kid- Something New
Both of them- Something borrowed
The cop's balls- something blue

"Hey, at least we're getting some stereotype diversity among police harassment victims.

#2 | POSTED BY ADAMMM"

They were just protecting the white man from the 5 year old black girl.

5 year olds are seriously dangerous...especially them black ones. I cross the street when I see one coming.

Racist PIGs.

It's not mentioned in the article but gramps was notorious jaywalker and sidewalk spitter.

Whatta a bunch of morons you guys are if he had been a pedo snatching a kid and the cops had just driven by ignoring the situation you'd be the 1st ones screaming the cops weren't doing their job. And no I'm not a big fan of cops as a rule

When Whites Are Involved In The Rearing Of Children Of Color, Cultural Genocide Is The Result.

Be Well.

It's good that they stopped him, but maybe a little tact next time? They do this kind of thing all of the time at border crossings and it doesn't take such a show of force to get the job done.

ahhh shut-up, Skippy

While I don't doubt this sort of thing happens all over the United States, it's a bit strange that anecdotal blog postings are now considered "news."

That coulda been me ..Kaksukahs!!

"When Whites Are Involved In The Rearing Of Children Of Color, Cultural Genocide Is The Result."

You mean I can stop eating all that curried goat and oxtail? Great.

Hey, wait a second right there....

Don't knock goat, its good for you.

It's good that they stopped him, but maybe a little tact next time?

They could have simply asked the girl who she was with. are there a lot of Mormons around Austin? They may have been thinking he was going to marry her.

Could this be one of those 'Cops' episodes from TV and they had to wait 'til commercial to correct their screw up? It goes without saying a cop would rather arrest an 'old man / woman, drunk' than face a younger crew! Means they'll see retirement - and make their quota, tickets AND arrests!

Don't knock goat, its good for you.
#15 | Posted by SHEEPLESHEPERD

LOL. I was just kidding, Skip's post didn't deserve to be taken seriously. I'm raising my daughter more as a Jamaican than an Italian.

The cops lied to tys mom and grand mom. Know this, cops lie all the time.
Just think of the kids you knew who grew up to be cops? do you trust them?
He should have pleaded the fith called his lawyer and sued em. If he had a cell he could have recorded.

That fact that this happened twice to these two, the first time three squad cars the second nine or ten squad cars, I think I'll call bullshit on the whole story and assume on two occasions a passing cop might have waved as he drove by. I think "Grits" just needed something for his blog to spice it up a bit.

You know how them seniors like to whip up a good story from time to time.

" I think I'll call bullshit on the whole story"

Not so fast. A good friend (half black, half Japanese, married a redhead) tells harrowing stories of being stopped more than once with his son (caucasian/Asian) in the back of the car. This grandpa's story is tame in comparison.

LOL. I was just kidding, Skip's post didn't deserve to be taken seriously. I'm raising my daughter more as a Jamaican than an Italian.
#18 | Posted by Hagbard_Celine at 2012-02-15 04:23 PM

Had she been a boy, I would have said chicks dig Italian food more than Jamaican. Not sure if it is reversable because I have never had a Jamacian woman cook for me...

#20 | Posted by Tedly at 2012-02-15 05:03 PM | Reply | Flag:
He did mention specific places. If a cop catches a child predator its' a notch in their belt. these cops were thinking citations and promotions. imho He did say it was a personal accounting and to track down the police report. Rings true to me. Now that chicken nugget story, that, i have questions.

You mean I can stop eating all that curried goat and oxtail? Great.

You can eat goats too?

- Tosser

Certainly not an issue in Austin when it comes to child abuse...

Never underestimate the stupidity of posters here. Or their laziness to look up wtf really happened...

"Henson wrote that officers verified his relationship to his daughter and eventually released them. But in his post, he questioned the need for such a response, and wondered about how his granddaughter would be affected by the interaction with police."

Hipolito said that a staff member at the Millenium Center called 911 around 7:50 p.m. Friday reporting a possible kidnapping. That caller believed a white man took a black female child and ran into the woods, Hipolito said. Several staff members left to go look for the man, presumably Henson, and police responded quickly, Hipolito said. About 10 officers plus a helicopter and K-9 unit were dispatched, he said.

On that type of call, we send everyone available, he said. He added that sometimes kidnapping suspects can be relatives of their victims. Hipolito said officers detained them, separated them, and called the girl's mother to verify their relationship.

You have to investigate to determine if the grandfather is supposed to have the child, Hipolito said. To me, he's making it into more of a racial thing.

If it had been a white grandfather with a white granddaughter, would anyone have been so quick to call the police?

#26 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 05:31 PM | Reply | Flag:
Did they have to handcuff him? Did they have to snatch up ty and question her without a parent or guardian? They questioned him let him go them picked him up again. bad police work all around. The police are beginning to become their own social strata. This is becoming a police state. imho

#28 | Posted by webwrangler at 2012-02-15 06:29 PM

Errr, you do understand he was speaking of two seprate incidents when Ty was 2 and 5, right? That said, simply read this again and say the police overreacted...

"Hipolito said that a staff member at the Millenium Center called 911 around 7:50 p.m. Friday reporting a possible kidnapping. That caller believed a white man took a black female child and ran into the woods, Hipolito said. Several staff members left to go look for the man, presumably Henson, and police responded quickly, Hipolito said. About 10 officers plus a helicopter and K-9 unit were dispatched, he said."

#29 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 06:45 PM | Reply | Flag:

That said, simply read this again and say the police overreacted...

"I complied, and they roughly cuffed me, jerking my arms up behind me needlessly. Meanwhile, Ty edged up the hill away from the officers, crying. One of them called out in a comforting tone that they weren't there to hurt her, but another officer blew up any good will that might have garnered by brusquely snatching her up and scuttling her off to the back seat of one of the police cars. (By this time more cars had joined them; they maxxed out at 9 or 10 police vehicles.)

I gave them the phone numbers they needed to confirm who Ty was and that she was supposed to be with me (and not in the back of their police car), but for quite a while nobody seemed too interested in verifying my "story." One officer wanted to lecture me endlessly about how they were just doing their job, as if the innocent person handcuffed on the side of the road cares about such excuses. I asked why he hadn't made any calls yet, and he interrupted his lecture to say "we've only been here two minutes, give us time" (actually it'd been longer than that). "Maybe so," I replied, sitting on the concrete in handcuffs, "but there are nine of y'all milling about doing nothing by my count so between you you've had 18 minutes for somebody to get on the damn phone by now so y'all can figure out you screwed up." Admittedly, this did not go over well."

I asked why he hadn't made any calls yet, and he interrupted his lecture to say "we've only been here two minutes, give us time" (actually it'd been longer than that). "Maybe so," I replied, sitting on the concrete in handcuffs, "but there are nine of y'all milling about doing nothing by my count so between you you've had 18 minutes for somebody to get on the damn phone by now so y'all can figure out you screwed up." Admittedly, this did not go over well."

Why is anyone surprised Buffalo Bulldick believes that 2 minutes is long enough for the cops to figure a kidnapping report can be resolved?

Why is anyone surprised Buffalo Bulldick believes that 2 minutes is long enough for the cops to figure a kidnapping report can be resolved?

#31 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 07:05 PM | Reply | Flag:

WTF are you talking about little mind? I never said anything like that at all. Gosh you sure are a fumbducker. Anyone can look at two posts and see you are lying out your punk ass.

;-)

With 10 cop cars and at least as many well armed and trained police officers in the immediate area, I don't think they had to treat the man so rough. It was needless. He wasn't going to kick anyones ass, and he wasn't going to run away. They should have frisked him, made the phone calls and apologized for the delay.

"WTF are you talking about little mind? I never said anything like that at all. Gosh you sure are a fumbducker. Anyone can look at two posts and see you are lying out your punk ass."

Then why exactly did you post that Buffalo Bulldick? Obviously you are admitting you are stupid enough to believe the guy's version and posted it. Instead of responding to the truth which was pasted. Are you that fucking stupid to think nobody noticed your amateur response?

With 10 cop cars and at least as many well armed and trained police officers in the immediate area, I don't think they had to treat the man so rough. It was needless. He wasn't going to kick anyones ass, and he wasn't going to run away. They should have frisked him, made the phone calls and apologized for the delay.
#33 | Posted by Buffalo_Bob at 2012-02-15 07:33 PM

What part of they were only there a couple of minutes is not reaching your adled brain? Oh wait, you believe they were there 18 minutes... 9 cops times two minutes...

"Maybe so," I replied, sitting on the concrete in handcuffs, "but there are nine of y'all milling about doing nothing by my count so between you you've had 18 minutes for somebody to get on the damn phone by now so y'all can figure out you screwed up."

What a sad state of affairs when an adult man is assumed to be some kind of pedophile and/or kidnapper simply because he's walking with a child. If there was no report of a kidnapping or any other reasonable suspicion, the police were incredibly out of line for even stopping this man. Being with a child while male is not a crime.

#36 | POSTED BY DCINMA AT 2012-02-15 08:04 PM | REPLY | FLAG

There WAS a reported suspected kidnapping. What a sad state of affairs when you can't be assed to read a story before commenting.

What part of they were only there a couple of minutes is not reaching your adled brain?

#35 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 07:36 PM | Reply | Flag:

I apologize. I keep forgetting your lack of intelligence on almost any subject. The point and problem was never the time he was detained. But now that you bring your idiot point to the forefront, he was there for much longer than two minutes. It was only two minutes until he asked why they hadn't called. No telling how much time it actually was until they called, or how long he was actually in handcuffs sitting on a curb.
I guess you think as soon as the cop said--"We've only been here a couple of minutes", that the cop immediately let him and the grandchild go. That's because you lack the intelligence to read correctly and get the correct scenario from the written word. I'm sure that affects your voting too. You simply don't know wtf is going on, and your delusions don't help. Unfortunately for the rest of us, your delusions affect the real world with your vote.

"I apologize. I keep forgetting your lack of intelligence on almost any subject."

You should apolgize for being a fucking idiot and ignoring what was pasted. Instead all you did was paste what the morons at Wonette wrote.

Here you useless sack of shit, educate or stimulate that mass you call a brain...

"Hipolito said that a staff member at the Millenium Center called 911 around 7:50 p.m. Friday reporting a possible kidnapping. That caller believed a white man took a black female child and ran into the woods, Hipolito said. Several staff members left to go look for the man, presumably Henson, and police responded quickly, Hipolito said. About 10 officers plus a helicopter and K-9 unit were dispatched, he said."

#29 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 06:45 PM | Reply | Flag
counting the time ty was two it would be three times they where detained.
Only read once but know what i read.

#39 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 08:42 PM | Reply | Flag:

So what dimmy? The cops should have been looking in the woods. The point stands. They didn't have to be so rough on the guy.

So what dimmy? The cops should have been looking in the woods. The point stands. They didn't have to be so rough on the guy.
Posted by Buffalo_Bob at 2012-02-15 08:51 PM

Like I said Buffalo Bulldick, you want to admit to your stupidity and believe the guy, I would expect nothing less. The fact you can't even figure out a kidnapping call was phoned in, and employees who called went to look for them isn't really a surprise here.

According to your victim it should have been resolved in five minutes, and knowing the POS acted guilty due to his victocrat attitude, and the nature of the call, the cops acted accordingly...

But wtf do you know, afterall a heroic act is a selfish act, and one would have to assume your feelings towards cops no doubt reflects it. No doubt the coward in you oozing out.

counting the time ty was two it would be three times they where detained. Only read once but know what i read.

#40 | Posted by webwrangler at 2012-02-15 08:45 PM |

It wasn't this:

A few years back Grits posed the question, "Is babysitting while white reasonable suspicion for police questioning?" after my granddaughter and I were detained and questioned at length in my neighborhood on suspicion of some nefarious deed (it was never quite clear what). In that incident, the police were pretty clear I was stopped solely because Ty, like her mother (who came to live with my wife and me when she was a child) is black, while I'm an almost stereotypical looking white Texas redneck. At the time, Grits was amazed that three squad cars were dispatched to question me for walking down the street with a child of a different race, detaining me for no good reason and scaring the bejeezus out of then-two-year old Ty.

Last night, though, Ty and I got the full jump-out-boys treatment, making our earlier interaction with Austin PD seem downright quaint. It could only have been more ridiculous if they'd actually arrested me, which for a while there didn't seem out of the question. (This is a personal tale much more than a policy analysis, so if you're only interested in the latter, don't bother to read further.)

one

ty was two.

two detained outside youth center

"if we were free to go, so I could get the child to bed. She looked skeptical but nodded and Ty and I turned tail and walked toward home."

Three. halfway home.

"As soon as we crossed the street, just two blocks from my house as the crow flies, the police car that just passed us hit its lights and wheeled around, with five others appearing almost immediately, all with lights flashing"

I think that's three times?

Like I said Buffalo Bulldick, you want to admit to your stupidity and believe the guy, I would expect nothing less.

#42 | Posted by crispee_oc at 2012-02-15 08:59 PM | Reply | Flag:

As stated, your delusions do not fit reality. You want to make up your own scenario, fine, living your delusions is a way of life for you. Too bad you vote.

#45 | Posted by Buffalo_Bob at 2012-02-15 10:04 PM | Reply | Flag: resident expert on "living his delusions"

Just another case of BOWW. I've have to deal with the same kind of harassment for the last 10 years.

Being Old While White

Isn't it just too precious that the usual ultra-right hard asses defend the police brutality (when was it ever otherwise?) while our regular human beings take the human being view? herm

You can eat goats too?

- Tosser

#24 | Posted by boaz at 2012-02-15 05:19 PM | Reply | Flag:

It actually tastes really good. I don't see why people have some stigma with goats here in the states.

Doesn't Sandra Bullock have a house in Austin? She better watch her ass!

The sad part is, if they did not stop this man and he was kidnapping this kid the question would be, why didn't they question this man.

No win situation.

while our regular human beings take the human being view? herm

#48 | POSTED BY HERM AT 2012-02-16 01:01 AM | REPLY | FLAG:

You WANT the police to respond like this. What the fuck is wrong with you that you want the police to just take the word of someone who doesn't look like he's even remotely related to the child he's walking with?

I guess interracial families need to expect to be detained by the police.

What a sad state of affairs when an adult man is assumed to be some kind of pedophile and/or kidnapper simply because he's walking with a child. If there was no report of a kidnapping or any other reasonable suspicion, the police were incredibly out of line for even stopping this man. Being with a child while male is not a crime.

#36 | Posted by DCinMA

I guess it would be out of the question to treat the guy with a little respect and just simply ask him and the girl a few questions.

It seems like cops are becomming their own worst enemy.

"You WANT the police to respond like this."

Do we? Was their anything other than the racial make-up of the family that drew the cops' attention? Was there a BOLA for a white male who abducted a black child? And 9 cops were necessary?

BOLA = BOLO

OMG I'm siding with Bob????? what has the world come to.

I see the guys point, he thinks it was longer than two minutes, but he ceded the point and said fine...lets use your two minutes then. and went with the 2*9=18 minutes analysis to prove the point that even given their lowball estimate (his opinion) that there was still sufficient resources there that someone could have called.

I think it's a great debate technique when I feel someone is exaggerating something downwards, and I realize that even with the exaggeration that my point is still valid, it strengthens my point to say while we disagree on the figure... lets use yours though and you'll see I'm STILL right.

That's what the guy was doing there, and it's sorta Bob's point.

#49 | POSTED BY DANIEL_3 AT 2012-02-16 01:09 AM

Goat is delicious.

#48 | POSTED BY HERM AT 2012-02-16 01:01 AM

Since you hate cops so much remember, when you become a crime victim DO NOT call the Police, it will go against your morals.

IDIOT

I thought this part was especially twisted:

Ty told me later that back in the police car she'd been questioned, not just about me but about her personal life, or as she put it, "all my business": They asked about her school, what she'd been doing that evening, to name all the people in her family, and pressed her to say if I or anyone else had done anything to her. Ty was frustrated, she said later, that they kept repeating the same questions, apparently hoping for different answers. She didn't understand why, after she'd told them who I was, the police didn't just let me go.

#60 | POSTED BY HAGBARD_CELINE

It's an over reliance on their "police instinct", which obviously in this case was completely being based off of the differences in race. Repeating the same question over and over is part of basic interrogation. Especially with children. If a child continues to repeat the same answer, it's safe to say that is the truth. A child doesn't have the fortitude to maintain a lie in the face of an authority that could be greater than what she is accustomed to at home. Being placed in the back of a police car and interrogated by someone with a badge and a gun removes the child from any comfort zone and brings about the most probable and truthful statement...to an extent, that is.

This is how much of the actual truth is brought out from child witnesses/victims. Though, I digress, this is also notorious for false confessions and false accusations. Many times a child will offer a different answer to repeated questions simply because he/she thought the answer is what the authoritative figure wanted to hear. Jesse Misskelly's false confession in the West Memphis Three case is a prime example.

I'm just offering points on both sides. But I have to emphasize that if this turned out to be a kidnapping case, nobody would be questioning the police procedures of interrogating the child. Bottom line is that no police officer should interrogate children - a specially trained psychiatrist should be required to ask the questions with the child's parents in a nearby room - preferably in a position where they can hear the questions and answers, but out of view of the child.

"But I have to emphasize that if this turned out to be a kidnapping case, nobody would be questioning the police procedures of interrogating the child."

Here's what I'm thinking, if it had been all about apprehending a kidnapper, and only about apprehending a kidnapper, that could have all been easily determined right from the beginning. The way it was handled makes me think that they over-did it out of their own biases and for their own esprit de corps. Otherwise, how in the dark about who they were looking for would they have to have been when they began their interrogation in order for them not to be able to ascertain immediately that this was not the child they were looking for? It's simply not believable that all that was necessary.

#62 | POSTED BY HAGBARD_CELINE

Anyone in law enforcement will tell you that when it comes to dealing with children, almost anything would be deemed "necessary" to ensure their safety.

I mean it comes down to this - in your view the child's right to privacy may have been invaded during the interrogation, to the point the child reached frustration. Anyone in law enforcement will tell you that is a "necessary" risk to take when dealing with any case involving children.

Look, I don't like the idea of cops prodding unnecessarily into anyone's "business," but I'm hard pressed to believe they would do anything like that simply to fulfill some personal mission or interest. If anything, the interrogator was trying to do a job and took the risk of offending this child in light of potentially stopping a predator.

The "risk v. reward" paradigm is weighed differently by those in law enforcement because they are exposed to terrible scenarios and images involving children quite often. It's the main reason why I refuse to go into law enforcement - I wouldn't be able to handle the issues and scenarios involving children. The most common issue I hear from law enforcement or U.S. Armed Forces personnel in regards to suffering from PTSD are scenarios and images involving children.

"I mean it comes down to this - in your view the child's right to privacy may have been invaded during the interrogation, to the point the child reached frustration. Anyone in law enforcement will tell you that is a "necessary" risk to take when dealing with any case involving children."

Rusty, what I'm saying is that it never should have come to that. They already knew that they had the wrong kid at minimum. IMO the interrogation was a fishing expedition, hoping to come up with something to justify their already over the top behavior which was a result of their inability to wrap their heads around the idea of a white man in Texas having so little self respect as to be seen on the street with his little brown grandchild. In their minds he had to be guilty of something so pushing the issue under the cover of protecting the child, was no big deal to them.