Cops Shooting Black People

[MineralMan]

Even when they're driving away, they get shot. Even when their hands are empty they get shot. Even if they are kids, they get shot.

Why? Because some cop is full of adrenalin and has his/her finger on the trigger of their service pistol.
Why? Because some cop is afraid of black people and has been conditioned to see black people as dangerous.
Why? Because too many cops are racists.
Why? Because it's far too easy to pull the trigger if your finger is on it.
Why? Because adrenalin makes your brain respond in reflexive ways, without your even being conscious of what you are doing.

Why don't white people get shot in those circumstances, or even when they shoot someone or hit a cop on the head with a hammer? Because they're white people and white people don't cause such an adrenalin rush in cops. So, white people get arrested, instead of getting shot to death.

This all needs fixing. It should have been fixed decades ago.

[StarfishSaver]

1. Thank you

This is important to say.

The inherent bias against Black people - the assumption that we are more dangerous and threatening - cannot be ignored. That assumption underlies much of the determination of whether a shooting is justified. It is not enough to say, "It was justified because the cop genuinely thought he was in danger." The problem is that how many cops calculate the danger they're in is colored by the race of the person they are facing. They see a Black person as far more dangerous than they would see a white person in exactly the same circumstances.

We can't just accept the conclusion at face value but must work back to the faulty premise that forms the basis for that conclusion.

[MineralMan]

3. Thanks.

In the Wright shooting here in Minnesota, the female cop who shot him did not even know she had her Glock in her hand, instead of her Taser. Why? Because she was acting reflexively and had no awareness of what weapon she was holding. Her conscious, thinking brain had shut down and she was running on automatic pilot.

If her adrenalin levels could have been measured at that time, they would have been through the roof. She was panicked with her fear of black people. She pulled the wrong weapon. She fired it, killing the young man. I doubt she even realized she pulled the trigger until she heard the report of her Glock when it fired.

Frankly, there wasn't even a reason to use a taser in that situation, but fear took control of her and she acted without considering what it was she was doing.

All because she is afraid of black men.

This has to stop.

[StarfishSaver]

5. Exactly

Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the justifications for the shooting start with "she made a mistake because she was in a high stress, dangerous situation." But they skip right over why she saw this as such a high stress, dangerous situation. I sincerely doubt that had Duante Wright been a white man that she would have been as hepped up by fear..

That is why I'm not impressed with the calls for "better training." Training won't help these situations. The training teaches officers how to respond to various threats. It can't train out of them their assumptions that Black people are greater threats to them than white people. That kind of unconscious bias is baked in and will take a lot more than some courses at the Academy to get rid of.

[MineralMan]

7. You're right, of course.

The bias and fear are learned over a period of years, and from childhood. You can't fix that in some classroom or field training exercise.

[Ocelot II]

16. Which points to the real question in that case:

Why did she think it was necessary to use even a taser on a kid who had been stopped for a dangling air freshener and expired license tags (a non-moving violation for which the penalty is only a fine)? Apparently, though, a bench warrant also had been issued because he'd previously been charged with carrying a handgun without a permit and evading police, and didn't make it to his court appearance on that charge. But although you do have to have a permit to carry one, owning a gun is legal for people of all races; and although he didn't get the required permit, there's no evidence he had used, or was going to use, the gun for unlawful purposes. Except - did the officer know the reason for the outstanding warrant? If so, did she make a negative assumption about Wright's possession of a handgun that she might not have made if he'd been white?

In any event, there was no reason to use even non-lethal force. They knew who he was and where he lived; they could have found him at his house, ticketed him for the air freshener and the expired tags, and arrested him on the bench warrant. He'd most likely have been bailed out, appeared in court via Zoom hearing on the gun carrying charge (a gross misdemeanor) (https://publicaccess.courts.state.mn.us/DocumentSearch file no. 27-CR-21-4400), and probably fined. And still alive.

[MineralMan]

17. Yes. There was no need for any sort of force to be used.

The only thing he was doing, really, was not following the orders from the police.

Comply or Die!

That seems to be the credo some cops follow.

[pennylane100]

2. Love your note at the end of your post.

I did not realize that a rag such as the daily mail was so popular. Growing up I always thought that only delusional people read. I was a reader of the Guardian.












gro

[USALiberal]

4. Most cops never fire a weapon in a 30 year career. nt

[StarfishSaver]

6. But the ones who do generally do it repeatedly

and their behavior is consistently covered up, excused and even applauded.

[USALiberal]

8. The system protects them, we need citys to have a citizens review board, not police or prosecutor nt

[MineralMan]

9. That is true. And it makes it even more likely that they

will kill someone reflexively if they pull their service pistol out of its holster.

[USALiberal]

13. The training needs to be more realistic, and it needs to happen constantly. Nt

[HipChick]

10. Well said..

[marie999]

11. Per capita, Blacks get killed way more than Whites but Whites get killed also.

I do agree with you on why Blacks are killed.

[BGBD]

15. Yes.

We keep getting posts about how black people are killed and white people aren't in all of these circumstances. The reality is that white people are killed by police in all of the mentioned circumstances on an average of 1.5 times a day. These shootings run the gambit from completely justified to clearly murder.

I don't understand why that fact has to be so discounted. Yes, a black person has a statistically greater chance of being killed. However, on any given killing the person is more likely to be white than not. These things can true at the same time and don't take away from the experience of minorities. We can talk about racism in policing without labeling every cop and white person a racist and without pretending like race is the only aspect of policing and use of force that needs attention.

[Devil Child]

23. +1 BGBD n/t

[StarfishSaver]

26. Here's the problem

WHENEVER we talk about race and racism in policing, we get responses like yours. In essence, you're discounting the problem and, yes, discounting our experiences.

We don't need to be lectured with caveats like "sometimes race ISN'T involved" or "all cops aren't racist." We already know that, we already acknowledge that consistently, and I have yet to see anyone accuse all cops and/or all white people racist. But the reality of too many cops killing black people at an alarming rate is always dismissed. Sometimes it's dismissed with blatantly racist comments. Sometimes it's dismissed with these kinds of strawmen propped up by well-meaning people like you. But whoever does it and however they do it, it is always painful and frustrating to have this very serious issue "contextualized" in this way. It is neither necessary nor helpful and all it does is to diminish the very real experiences, the very real pain of minorities who are subjected to this treatment and makes it all the more difficult to do anything about it.

[StarfishSaver]

12. Another answer to your Why

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=15369648

[mcar]

14. Well, and sadly, said

[Devil Child]

18. So the narrative has now become no whites ever suffer police violence?

That’s a delightfully delusional view of reality to me.

[MineralMan]

20. I said nothing of the sort.

What I said was that white people are not shot and killed by cops in the kinds of circumstances black people do.

That is a different statement, which I'm sure you already knew.

Your claim sounds a lot like "All lives matter" to me.

Please do not put words in my mouth. I have plenty of them in there already.

[Devil Child]

21. But they are killed in the same situations. I'd agree with you if you mentioned disparities

...in how frequently lethal police encounters occur with black vs white populations. Thanks for the response though.

[Zeitghost]

22. The problem is

They are killed in those exact situations, just not quite at the same rate.

[Ocelot II]

24. Of course unarmed white people are also subjected to police violence, but

it seems that when white people are killed or mistreated by police it's because they failed to comply immediately with some demand an officer made, and the reason for the noncompliance was often due to mental illness or disability, intoxication, or even deafness. If a person doesn't comply instantly with what a cop tells them to do, too often the cop reacts with force and violence, notwithstanding that the person might not have understood what they were being told. Apparently this is the result of they way they are trained; they are not taught how to recognize or deal with people with some kind of adverse psychological or physical condition. When a black person is involved, this insistence on immediate compliance is just added to the cops' existing assumption that the person is dangerous just because they're black - which is why, with relation to the percentage of black people in the total population, they are more likely to be abused by police than white people.

[Devil Child]

25. Thank you for the response Ocelot II, your post is well written

and provides analysis on this problem which I agree with. Especially your closing sentence and the role of training in how police respond to an escalating situation.

[StarfishSaver]

27. I don't think training is the answer

Training helps cops decide what to do when faced with threats.

It does nothing to deal with the fact that too many cops base their assessment of who is and who isn't a threat upon the race of the person they're encountering. You can't train that out of someone in a 20-hour course at the Academy.

[Ocelot II]

28. That part is probably true, but they could at least be taught

that demanding instant compliance and responding with force if it doesn't happen is usually counterproductive and tends to escalate a situation; there should be much more training on de-escalation methods. Situations where a person fails to comply with an order should be considered a possible mental health crisis, which is why some proposals for police reform include using social workers or psychologists to deal with these situations rather than, or at least along with, armed officers. The prejudiced assumption that a person's race makes them more dangerous isn't something that can be trained away in a typically short police training course (and US police training is ridiculously abbreviated; in a lot of other countries it's two or three years, not just a few months), but at least they can start with being made aware of that prejudice. An emphasis on de-escalation and accountability if it doesn't happen would at least be a start.

[StarfishSaver]

29. They already know all of that, as evidence by their propensity to approach white people this way

The problem, as I see it, is that they think too many Black people don't meet this criteria. They don't believe that not giving a Black person time to comply with an order goes against their training - they think that Black people are non-compliant even when they're not or that they have a valid reason not to wait for a Black person to comply. The training kicks in only after the officer makes certain judgment calls. It's those judgment calls that are a problem, not lack of training.

[Ocelot II]

30. I don't know how to fix that - better screening of police applicants,

more minority officers, require cops to live in the city that employs them? I wish I knew.

[Stuart G]

19. Kick for visability...Thank You for Posting K and R