Why is it some people JUST HAVE to know the race of suspects

[cboy4]

who commit crimes?

I have a friend who's a producer at a TV station in Florida, and he told me last night they get calls from pissed off people wanting to know why the race of the criminal who was reported on the news was not disclosed.

This television station's policy is......it's irrelevant, unless there's something very distinctive about the description (i.e., black male wearing red sweat pants, a Boston Celtics cap or a white male with a dragon tattoo on his right arm, wearing a Bush Sucks t-shirt, etc.)

I agree.

Does it really matter if the gunman who holds up a liquor store across town is white or black or Asian or whatever, if police don't have anything other than a generic description of the person?

Perhaps the one exception I can think of is if, lets say, there's a gunman actively on the loose in a neighborhood.

People should have some idea who to look out for....whether they're black, white, red, yellow, brown.

Otherwise, what's the point of saying a black man held up a bank wearing jeans and a white t-shirt when there's lord knows how many black people wearing jeans and white t-shirts in a given city??

I think to mention the race of every suspect only furthers stereotypes, which I'm sure is why this TV station and others refrain from doing so, despite the pissy calls.