An odd little detail

I remember, way back when, reading news stories in the Daily Oklahoman that included the race of accused criminals. No, come to think of it, I think they would just mention it if the accused was black--at least those are the cases I remember. Not just race related crimes, but any sort of arrest that merited inclusion in the state paper. If they didn't specify the race, I guess you were to assume that it was a white guy or an Indian. I'm not quite sure when the practice stopped, but it had to be around the mid-to-late 80's, and I think I remember reading a short blurb about how they were stopping it.

What made me think of that? This paragraph from the London Telegraph about a police shooting in England:

Armed police were called after the 37-year-old woman, who was white and lived locally, was seen in the High Street brandishing her gun at about 1.20am yesterday.