Check out
this weeper about a Belgian tourist getting busted for a crime he didn't commit:
He wound up arrested one afternoon at gunpoint, taken to the 34th
Precinct station house, held for several hours and accused of lying
about a crime that he not only had nothing to do with, but that hadn’t
even taken place.
Sounds like a flustercluck, but when you read the story deeper, it turns out that a man had reported a burglary, and identified the Belgian as one of the burglars. So there was very good reason for him to be arrested. On further review, it turned out that the complainant was a nutcase, who subsequently admitted that he had made up the story about the burglary, but that had yet to be determined. And get this gratuitous bit at the end:
Mr. Vansintjan knew nothing of this until I told him on Tuesday. When he
was in the holding cell, he was the only white; the 10 others were all
being held on pot charges. “If I weren’t white,” he said, he might have
been held overnight.
Might there be another reason than color that he was not held overnight? Like, specifically, that the cops found out that the accuser rescinded the charges? Note as well that the Belgian does not know for a fact that the other detainees weren't released before the night was over.
