Adeola Aderounmu.
Barkaby is one of the local areas in Stockholm. Usually, I try to refrain from writing about very personal things on my BLOG but this one really struck me. I finished working and I’d gone to the day care center to take my daughter. I parked my car and went to the nearby train station to pick up a copy of the day’s Metro Newspaper.
Then I went into the center to get my daughter. On my way out, I noticed a police car parked at the entrance of the center (Dagis as it is called in Sweden). I’d thought to myself: what the f*** had happened here in 10minutes that I’d been inside the Dagis?
Anyway, the police walked up to me and I thought it would be a routine question on whatever had happened. I was wrong! The police were out there waiting for me. I was their suspect!!!
One useless idiot had called the police to tell them that he had seen one of the 3 guys who broke into an apartment (or a house somewhere in the neighbourhood) earlier. He told the police that he was 100% sure that I was among the burglars.
It is one thing to call the police and give them info, it is quite another thing entirely to tell them that you are 100% sure that you have seen a suspect.
Imagine if I’d gone to that area on a normal day like this and not having to pick up my daughter. Imagine also that I was on free foot and not having to drive my own car.
Eyewitnesses’ accounts are taken seriously everywhere but I was able to end all the expectations of that useless caller and the police most likely because of my daughter and the fact that I drove straight from work to this Dagis. I am always careful about my dress and today was not an exception. I am very sure that in the eyes of the police, that caller is a BIG NUISANCE.
Apparently, the idiot caller didn’t know that I drove a car to the Dagis. I’m sure he only saw me after I’d gone to pick up the Metro newspaper and thought I’d approach from the train station.
The Swedish Police were very careful to approach me anyway because they don’t like to make mistakes or make a fool of themselves. They would have thought of the several questions that also popped up in my mind. The answers to those questions simply did not give them the room to interrogate me except to check my driver’s license.
My daughter’s alibi was definitely greater than the nonsense 100% certainty of a very stupid and useless informant. I wish the Police good luck with their investigation.
A View From The Scandinavian 
happy for you Adeola. I bet you would have given your baby a big kiss…….just at the nick of time.
Its quite unfortunate though, – the reality that faces Africans/black folks in general – especially when outside the shores of Africa —unjustly summarized/labelled as suspects/criminals everywhere they step their foot. This is the opposite of what foreigners face in Africa.
In the white-man’s land, the black man is a summarized ‘suspects’, but in Africa, the white man is King. The white man is King even if he does any wrong, and should you be a black-man eye-witness, forget it, your testimony does not carry much weight. Its an irony that we have to live with.
I believe it generally has to do with one knowing himself/herself and his/her rights, as well as one’s own comportment. Yes dressing matters, and as the saying goes, its how you dress that you’ll be addressed. But like an article in a newspaper sometime last week said, todays bad-boys are now wearing 3-piece suits, so we need to be more careful.
LikeLike
I must say I count you fortunate even though this episode should never have happened.
It is however outrageous that many “whites” seem to assume we all look alike and hence any “black” face is the face of the suspect, no matter how remote.
Sadly, there have been miscarriages of justice because of these identifications especially where one cannot obtain a cast-iron alibi – but who goes around hoping to have an alibi for any eventuality?
It is an unfair and unevenly loaded justice system that allows for these horrible things to thrive.
The image of black men with guns (a false eye-witness call) would get the police running around like that have hit on the biggest crime in town and I once got caught up in that situation in England – the experience cannot be relived, it was harrowing.
Wish you well.
Akin
LikeLike