Eyewitness identification is known to be extraordinarily weak, yet in this case police officers were letting that decide if this man should be taken in. Even worse, we know that cross-racial identifications are often more inaccurate than the already poor identifications of people we don&#x27;t know.[0]<p>No, I do not believe that the police are picking everyone &quot;close to the given description of a criminal complaint&quot;. Perhaps they were trying to pick up everyone close to the description in _this_ criminal complaint.<p>IMHO, this is simply an excuse to pursue racial profiling. In this story, the police readily admitted that he didn&#x27;t match the description (he was heavier) but they didn&#x27;t really notice until after the fact and this didn&#x27;t prompt them to let him go. Then what was the point of detaining him? Clearly for show, everyone in the area was reminded of how active the police were. Again, in my opinion, I suspect that the way people felt about said activity would likely break along racial lines.<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;heinonline.org&#x2F;HOL&#x2F;LandingPage?handle=hein.journals&#x2F;ajcl28&amp;div=15&amp;id=&amp;page=" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;heinonline.org&#x2F;HOL&#x2F;LandingPage?handle=hein.journals&#x2F;a...</a>