Yale Clears Officer Accused Of Stopping Black NYT Columnist’s Son At Gunpoint

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Yale University announced Tuesday that an internal investigation had cleared a campus police officer accused of stopping a black New York Times writer’s son at gunpoint.

Columnist Charles M. Blow recounted his college-aged son’s experience in an angry series of tweets and in a column back in January.

He said his son, Yale student Tahj Blow, told him that he had been stopped at gunpoint on his way home from the campus library. Only after Tahj had been told to get on the ground did the officer ask him to produce ID and it wasn’t until Tahj came across a second officer later on that he was informed he matched the description of a robbery suspect, according to Blow’s account.

Conservative writers attempted to debunk Blow’s account when Yale later sent out a campus-wide email noting that the officer involved in the stop was also black.

The internal investigation “concluded that the officer drew his firearm in the ‘low ready’ position, with his finger off the trigger at all times, and put his weapon back in its holster in a matter of seconds,” according to a news release. The release went on to state that “the officer did not violate any Yale Police regulations regarding patrol procedures or the use of force.”

A message sent by university President Peter Salovey to the campus community acknowledged the thorny racial issues presented by the stop of Blow’s son, however. The columnist had invoked the police-involved killings of Ferguson, Mo. teen Michael Brown and Staten Island man Eric Garner in his original tweets.

“We also must continue to recognize that this incident intersected – in ways that were both public and very painful – with current national conversations on race, prejudice, policing, and the use of force,” the message read. “As we said in our earlier message, these are important and difficult issues, and there are real challenges here that we, as members of the Yale community and as citizens, must face.”

Blow wasn’t having it, though:

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