Doctor who tests homeless for COVID-19 says cop cuffed him at his home for no reason

[conuly]

I had to wait for the picture to load to confirm that the doctor in question is black.

I'm not saying race definitely was a factor here, but unlike the Miami Herald I feel it'd be remiss not to suggest it might have been.

Comments

[lilysea]

Yes, I'm torn between

a) this was because he was Black;
b) this was because he works with homeless patients;
c) all of the above

[conuly]

Yup.

[dine]

I pick C

[cynthia1960]

+10000

[calimac]

I'm not sure how the cop could tell that the guy putting out boxes in front of his house also works with homeless patients. But the cop sure could tell the guy was black.

[adrian_turtle]

This. The police did not catch him with any homeless patients--they went to his house and arrested him "because" of something silly and unrelated. If the police motive was his work with homeless patients, they must have figured out his name and address and gone to his house to arrest him and not say why.

I think the police had no idea he was the doctor who had been working with the homeless. The Herald just brought it up to say, "these are bad cops who arrested an admirable black man." Like it wouldn't matter if they just roughed up some random innocent guy who didn't spend all his time doing dangerous charitable work.

[landofnowhere]

:-(

(But also my brain initially parsed that headline all wrong. Doctor Who took a COVID-19 test and got a result of "homeless"?)

[hudebnik]

Me too.

[readerjane]

Me three

[julian]

Me four. It was very odd!

[rhoda_rants]

Five! Yeah, this took me way too long to figure out.

[sabotabby]

I mean the link text tells us that without a picture. Ugh.

[conuly]

Maybe the person who wrote the article thought, therefore, that they didn't need to mention race at any point.

[captainsblog]

Doctor Who Tests Homeless?

What happened to the TARDIS?

(I've seen this a few times and double-taked. Double-took?)

[greghousesgf]

God, that's how I read it at first too.

[zesty_pinto]

It's that class struggle once again. Been seeing a lot of commentaries these days about how the pandemic has been emphasizing a large need for social reform, but there's also a lot of people who know the right people to talk to who who don't want that to happen since it affects their bottom line.

TBF I still feel icky about Cuomo bragging about the prison labor he's using to make hand sanitizer for cheap.

[monanotlisa]

Yes! I saw that earlier, but like you I knew what was going on before the picture loaded...

[conuly]

"Maybe it's just a case of shitty policing with no racial undertones at all! Maybe... maybe... nope."

[silveradept]

At a certain point, you have to wonder when the media is going to go "he did it because the black man was black and the officer was white," and they're not going to have to hide it or suggest that it's an allegation at all.

[conuly]

Not today, apparently.