Posted on February 23, 2010

NJ ‘Racial Profiling’ Stop Traced to ‘Victim’

Brian Thompson, NBC New York, February 22, 2010

A 19-year-old Queens student, Rodney Tanzymore, was arrested Monday morning by New Jersey State Police for allegedly making a phony 911 call last November that resulted in a controversial traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

At the time of the original incident, State Police were accused of racial profiling when they stopped a bus full of mostly black and Hispanic Queens students who were returning to New York from a visit to Howard University in Washington, DC.

They had stopped the bus on the Turnpike between exits 7 and 7A after getting a 911 just moments earlier when the bus had stopped at a rest stop and someone called in saying they saw thee of the people on the bus brandishing weapons.

Troopers responded, pulling the bus over and getting everyone off the bus, putting them in handcuffs, and searching them and the bus in an effort to find the gunmen.

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The intense investigation led State Police to this arrest of Tanzymore, one of the students on the bus. He is alleged to have made the call, apparently as a prank.

And a source tells us he is alleged to have done this before–in New York. Tanzymore was arrested by the NYPD last August for making a false 911 call.

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