Dangerous time/place/behavior update (04/01/2008)
Courtesy of KTRK-13 comes this dangerous time/place/behavior update from yesterday:
DeChaumes Elementary School parents are on alert tonight after the school principal telephoned to warn them about the attempted abduction of a student on a city street Monday.
An 11-year-old boy reported he was walking to DeChaumes Elementary Monday at about 7:45am when a man grabbed him, threw him to the ground and ripped his shirt. The student was not harmed, and he ran away a short distance back to a home on Rittenhouse street where he notified family members. After receiving the report, HISD Police immediately increased patrols in the area of the school.
Principal Sandy Gaw contacted 349 homes before DeChaumes students were dismissed this afternoon to warn parents about the attempted abduction. HISD Police are searching for the suspect.
The suspect is described as an African American male wearing a black t-shirt and blue jeans. The student said the man who attacked him is 5'11" to 6' feet tall, between 35 and 40 years old, weighs 160 to 175 pounds and has black hair. The student said he saw the man driving a black four-door Cadillac from the model years 1991 to 1995.
You should add "walking to school, about 7:45 in the morning, near DeChaumes Elementary School" to the list of dangerous time/place/behavior situations to avoid, if you don't want to become a crime victim in Houston.
Incidentally, anyone notice anything interesting about this coverage in the Chronicle?
The alleged abductor is described as 5 feet 11 inches to about 6 feet tall. He is between 35 and 40 years old and weights 160 to 175 pounds. He has black hair. The student told police he saw the man driving a black four-door Cadillac from the model years 1991 to 1995.
Leaving aside the typo ("weights" instead of "weighs"), the Chronicle appears to go out of its way to remove any mention of race, even though it is part of a physical description (credit to Polimom for the catch). Recall that the Chronicle's former reader representative James Campbell previously downplayed criticism of such Chronicle shenanigans, contending that including racial information in such descriptions might lead to "racial scorekeeping."
Unfortunately, with Campbell's departure from the newspaper and the ongoing downsizing, the current Chronicle reader representative has not continued the reader representative column, rarely posts to the About:Chron blog, and rarely responds to blog comments/emails, so we don't expect him to have anything useful to say about this silly practice of the newspaper. In fact, we're not quite sure why the newspaper even bothers with the pretense of having an ombudsman (because Jeff Cohen could just as easily avoid critical phone calls with a good secretary and/or voicemail system).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/01/08 11:59 PM | Houston Miscellany | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (1)
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