Here we go again. On Thursday, a black lawyer from Washington, Donald Sherman, was taking his infant son, Caleb, out for a walk at Kingman and Heritage Islands Park. Caleb had a fever, and his dad stayed home to take care of him.
Things were going well until …
"Thirty minutes into our stroll I got flagged by a security officer in one of those cars marked 'Special Police' on the side," Sherman wrote. "I was a bit confused as to whether she was looking for me to stop but she honked twice and pulled over so I got the picture.
"She told me that she received a complaint from someone who said there was a 'suspicious man' walking on the bike path with a baby. She said that when the complainant was asked to describe my race, she declined.
"Nevertheless, this person, a white lady on a bike who veered off as Caleb and I were walking in her direction, saw fit to report me to security."
The security officer knew this woman was blowing smoke, but felt she needed to tell Sherman what was going on.
Needless to say, Sherman was pretty shaken up. He knew that things could have gone very differently had any other security officer or cop taken that report. As he put it, “doing any thing anywhere my safety and my child's safety could been in jeopardy because some well intentioned complaint.”
Sherman was being kind to it. Just for living our lives, trying to mind our business, we blacks have to worry about being collared by the police? What year is this, 1958 or 2018?