Comments have been raised in the last day on one of our stories about The Star's policy regarding identification of suspects in crimes.
The commenter got it right that we do not always use the suspect identification information provided by police.
But it's not a "PC" concern, or a concern about using the race of suspects that has prompted the policy, as some of our commenters have speculated.
We don't use the identification when we believe it is so generic as to be of little to no use in actually identifying a suspect.
In the case of the robbery at Ventura College, for instance, the police described the suspects as "two possibly Hispanic males wearing dark clothing, both approx. 5'6" with thin builds." That's a description that fits hundreds of individuals who walk across that college campus every day. We don't believe it is fair to all of them to potentially label them as robbery suspects.
We're not passing judgment on the quality of descriptions released by police. Quite often that's all they have. But if the description says, for instance, "white male, 5-foot-7 to 6-foot-1, medium build, wearing white t-shirt", which often happens, then we believe it is too generic to help ... and might actually do harm if citizens call police every time they see someone who might fit that description.
If the description is specific enough to identify an individual (facial characteristics, for instance), then we use it. Regardless of race.