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longwayhome -> RE: Black Muslim Refugee Cop Shoots Unarmed White Female Homeowner (7/19/2017 3:08:29 AM)
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FR
This particular shooting is a bit puzzling. It sounds as if something went very wrong with this policeman's application of procedure or his training. Unless the officer himself can explain his actions it will remain a mystery.
Of course this is a tragedy like any shooting, in particular the shooting of an innocent woman who had called the police in the first place. The worrying thing is that this adds to the number of unnecessary shootings where there must have been different options and what appears to be a problem with de-escalating situations, which suggests a wider problem with training and/or the culture in some police departments.
Given the number of police shootings in the US compared to other rich western democracies it is clear at the very least that US policemen reach for a gun and use it more frequently than other places. Inevitably where guns are used in law and order situations there are going to be mistakes and miscarriages of justice that come along with a number of these shootings. This is less a criticism of the US, more an acknowledgement that there is a problem to be addressed.
As for the spurious race/religion issue raised by the OP, it would be surprising with so many police firearms incidents that police personnel of colour did not sometimes shoot white people and that some of those shootings would be questionable. That does nothing to mitigate the fact that people of colour are disproportionately killed in police shootings, both in comparison to the population as a whole and taking crime stats into account. There is a race issue here but it's not just a race issue.
Quite apart from the appalling tragedy for this woman and her family, the overwhelming concern is what makes the police reach so often for their guns and what makes them discharge them. Statistics and experiments suggest that even black officers disproportionately shoot black men, and react differently in test situations to black and white subjects. This suggests that there is something going on which is far more subtle than the overt racism which is sometimes evident.
Leaving aside the possibility that there are a number of cops who are just very trigger happy and have no regard for human life, there is at the least a deep-seated self-preservation instinct among the police that goes wrong in real life situations. This does work disproportionately, but not entirely, against non-white suspects, even if you yourself are a black policeman. If you think that you are in a war, you will feel the need to use your gun more often, whatever the consequences.
Apart from the normal cycle of message board blame and counter-blame, there would appear to be issues here which don't have easy solutions. If you were running a police department addressing these issues would be the most difficult part of your job. How do you hire, train and prepare people to do law enforcement jobs to keep the public safe, themselves safe and ensure that situations are appropriately de-escalated to minimise the risks of things going wrong, whilst at the same time rooting out conscious and unconscious racism, incompetence and the plain criminality of (hopefully) a small number of officers?
People continue to die unnecessarily at the hands of the police, in the full glare of an unsympathetic press and public. Of course the police are blamed because their fingers are on the triggers.
No easy solutions to a hugely socially divisive issue.
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