to be hacked off with this stereotype, esp coming from the police

[becstarlitsea]

Stereotype in question - that teenage boys are criminals, that crime committed is done by 'kids', that any boy in possession of a hooded sweatshirt is a suspect.

Firstly the flat downstairs was broken into. Our neighbours told us that the police had told them it was likely to be 'kids'. The evidence for this seems scanty - it's not like the burglars left behind a set of crayons and a half finished juice box. It was a well-planned robbery, done in under 10 minutes while I was upstairs and didn't hear a thing.

Then our door was damaged in an attempted break in. The SOCO told me that I shouldn't worry as it was likely to be 'kids'.

Then last night at 2am I saw a group of five men in their mid-twenties checking how best to get over the fences of the block of flats next doors and ours and another at the back. They were a well-organised group - one checking one fence, one checking another, one of them clearly in charge telling them where to go next, pointing different blocks etc. When I reported it to the police the operator kept saying 'youths' (I'd described them as men) 'So did you see what colour these youths were?''. She was clearly used to people phoning up saying 'There is a black teenager in a hoodie standing outside our flats. Kindly arrest him immediately as he's bound to be up to no good.'

Okay, I'm so cross I need to shout. A LOT OF CRIME IS COMMITTED BY WHITE ADULTS. I shouldn't need to keep reiterating that they were white and adult over and over again to get it through to the police. And...
NOT ALL TEENAGE BOYS ARE CRIMINALS. In fact I don't believe that the percentage of teenagers who commit serious crime is higher than the percentage of adults.

It pisses me off that the minute my DS's voice breaks he'll be considered 'threatening' if he walks home from football practice with a couple of his mates.

Am venting. Bah!

There is a big difference between the police knowing that the majority of certain crimes in an area are committed by a particular group of people and the police believing that all people from a certain group are committing crimes.

DH, very sadly, confirms that the majority of crimes he deals with (he works as part of a safer neighbourhood team in a small city) are perpetrated by young men between the ages of 13 and 25. Particularly where things like burglaries are concerned, a large number of the burglaries are carried out by a small number of people and the method, time, location, items taken etc often indicate the perpetrators before descriptions are even sought. Of course this shouldn't bias the investigation but dh is very surprised by how predictable crime is in the vast majority of cases.

All that said... DH was out in plain clothes on a Saturday night recently. he was wearing his own clothes- baggy hoodie (to cover body armour), jeans, hat with mock dreadlocks (to cover earpiece). He was wandering aimlessly around areas of known high crime and received a radio message that a young caucasian man in his late 20s wearing a dark hoodie, black hat and jeans was wandering aimlessly in the area. DH was most amused.