White people on Twitter are confessing to crimes that get black people arrested

[Janelle2002 3,865]

http://qz.com/306243/crimingwhilewhite-white-people-on-twitter-are-confessing-to-crimes-that-black-people-are-prosecuted-for/

This is very interesting.

Using the #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag, white Twitter users are apparently confessing to crimes they committed and got away with, that they say could more likely have gotten a black American arrested. The confessions range from the petty:

Robyn Kopp @filmfixation Follow

I dined and dashed-cop found me at the movies, I paid the bill and he left. I was rude but not arrested and not killed. #CrimingWhileWhite

At 13 I stole a car with my friends & drove it 2wks before we got busted. Only one charged was black. #CrimingWhileWhite

6:18 PM - 3 Dec 2014

Exhaled blunt smoke in a cop's face as I opened my door and then told him he couldn't come in without a warrant. He left. #CrimingWhileWhite

#CrimingWhileWhite is an unexpected byproduct of the intense racial tensions in the US around police in Missouri and New York not facing indictment for killing suspects. And while it’s hard to verify the truth of the confessions or race of the confessors, they’re plausible given what statistics have already proven—people of color are more likely to be stopped by police, and arrested for crimes, than whites. Police in Ferguson, Missouri, for example, stopped seven times as many black drivers as white ones last year, and arrested them at twice the rate:

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Blacks also are three times as likely to be killed by law enforcement officers as whites.

The bulk of the confessions on #CrimingWhileWhite are what you might call “youthful indiscretions,” ie stupid stuff that many Americans have done as teens, and that, if they are white, they probably didn’t get arrested, prosecuted, or shot for, like underage drinking:

[decocker 7,198]

hey hey. i've got quite a few of these stories. youthful indiscretions, yep.

[SMOKE 1,426]

i'm the real beltway sniper.