"Hey your son got murdered, but were going to search your house and if we find nothing we'll arrest your other son"
Who fuck does that? Someone needs to be suspended or fired for that fuck up.
I don't think it happened like that or
I would at least like to believe that it was more along the lines of officer asks a bunch of questions followed by "Spooner accused your son of stealing, do you know if your son was involved in anything criminal?" The mom said "no" and the police asked if they could search the house to verify that. This is also really part of how police are trained, they are instructed to ask if they can search things like cars or houses so they can find criminal possessions or activities with every chance to stop a crime and no liability if the search is consensual. Spooner probably declined a search of his house and thus the officers could not search his house* (to the best of my knowledge).
Again, I could be wrong and such thing could be racial prejudice on the officers' part. However, at this point we really don't know enough either way and I would like to believe that such search disparities arose due to legal technicalities and not prejudice.
*EDIT: I should say without a warrant.