Why Grand Juries Don’t Indict Cops When They Kill
Police are allowed to use lethal force under specific circumstances, when it’s reasonable to do so. Especially when it comes to black suspects, that means almost anytime.
Police sometimes see things differently.
Former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson told a grand jury that Michael Brown looked like a “demon” who might shrug off a hail of bullets before Wilson shot him dead. Shortly after Cleveland Police Officer Timothy Loehmann gunned down Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old holding a toy gun, he told the dispatcher that Rice, who was shot within two seconds of Loehmann’s arrival, was “maybe 20.” Milwaukee Police Officer Christopher Manney told investigators that Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed man whom he shot 14 times in October, was so “big” and “muscular” that “he would be impossible to control if you were one-man.” At 5-foot-7 and 180 pounds, Hamilton was below average height and overweight.
The stark reality that Princeton sociologist Devah Pager documented-- that whites with a criminal record are more likely to get job interviews and offers than equally if not better qualified blacks without a criminal record--goes almost unnoticed.