May 28, 2009 10:00 pm US/Eastern
Outrage Over Racial Profiling In Kidnapping Hoax
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
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Bonnie Ann Sweeten, 38, is in police custody after faking a frightening abduction and fleeing to Orlando, Florida with her 9-year-old daughter, Julia Rakoczy.
CBS
Bonnie Sweeten's distressing 911 call saying she had been carjacked and thrown in a trunk by two black men turned out to be a hoax. But Sweeten's story has angered many in the African-American community.
"That turned every black man in Philadelphia into a suspect the day she said that," Deshantel Odom said.
Sara Lanious of South Philadelphia agreed with Odom's statements.
"It's just sad that people still look at it that way and that people thought that a black president would solve a lot of that and obviously, it probably hasn't," Lanious said.
Jerry Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania NAACP, said his office has been taking phone calls from community members saying Sweeten's story may have a negative effect on the African-American community.
"We've received a number of phone calls, both here at my newspaper and at the (NAACP) office, from people who are angry, people of color who are angry that black men are being blamed again," Mondesire explained.
Phones are also lighting up at radio stations in Philadelphia, including at 900AM WURD.
Talk show host Al Butler said he has received dozens of calls from people saying they are outraged that African-American men are continually seen as criminals.
"90 percent of the country will immediately think that it's OK, not that she's lying, not assume that she's lying," Butler said.
Temple University professor Doctor Sonja Peterson-Lewis agrees, saying Sweeten chose to make an accusation that she felt the public and law enforcement would believe.
"It goes to the assumption that the public will take this as a credible story, that the authorities will take this as something credible, 'it will buy me some time to do what I need to do,'" Peterson-Lewis explained.
But Mondesire thinks this is an isolated incident, suggesting race relations have improved, at least in Philadelphia.
"It wasn't like a bunch of African-Americans were rounded up and thrown against the walls like in the 70s when the police department, at that time, treated black males like that," Mondesire said "We've moved beyond that."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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