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BamaD -> RE: Black Muslim Refugee Cop Shoots Unarmed White Female Homeowner (7/22/2017 9:40:18 AM)
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ORIGINAL: longwayhome
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ORIGINAL: BamaD
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ORIGINAL: longwayhome
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ORIGINAL: BamaD
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ORIGINAL: longwayhome
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.
Non-white officers do just as often shoot unarmed white people but there is no ratings covering it and it weakens the claims so you just don't hear about it that much.
I had the same questions so I did some research and most of what I found was news people questioning the low key approach to black officers shooting white people to the extent that if the shooter is black his race is not initially released.
I am more concerned about all victims of police shootings and what the police can do about it. I specifically referred to black officers too because they are not immune to making mistakes with a gun in their hand.
There are surely issues about de-escalation, training and strategy. We are talking about policemen, not soldiers here (and even soldiers are trained about the risks of over-reacting in patrolling civilian areas).
Being a black man makes it more likely to be shot by the Police (in proportion to the population and crime stats), but even if you took away that bias there is still a problem, epitomised by the tragic shooting of this woman, who could just as easily have been shot by a white officer.
I have sympathy for the police in doing their job in a weaponised community, but the fact is that the high number of police shootings when there could have been other outcomes is an issue that needs to be addressed if the police are going to regain and retain the trust of their communities, black or white.
The higher rate of the shootings can be explained largely do to the fact that the crime rate among blacks is even a greater increase of that of others than the shooting disparity.
Don't get me wrong. A unjustified shooting in the highest crime area in the country is still wrong but it does help explain the disparity in shootings.
The more hostile contact the more shootings.
None of what you said is any grounds for complacency.
One - there is a problem with how the police use their weapons, especially in situations which might otherwise have been de-escalated.
Two - the higher rate of police shootings of non-white subjects is out of proportion with both the size of the non-white population and the related crime rates. In other words the number of police shootings is higher than would be suggested by higher crime rates.
Incidentally, just to prevent widening the debate in the thread out to much, I have tried to keep to police shootings and not tried to examine why non-white people commit more crime in the US and Western Europe. I haven't even touched on the relationship between income and crime, the lower average pay of people of colour and the inevitable consequence of not tackling deprivation in black communities. Add to the fact that in the US a black man is more likely to be arrested, convicted and given a custodial sentence for the same crime as a white man, and the you start to destroy the myth that black people are somehow culturally more likely to commit crime. Truth is differential crime figures reduce when people have similar income and opportunities, but that is not the point I was trying to make in this thread.
I am just asking the questions in relation to my first point about what the police can do to respond better so that fewer people die as a result of upholding the law. It's a sincere attempt to concentrate on positive solutions rather than throw blame around.
It is out of proportion to the population, but not he crime rate. The majorities of murders in this country are committed by blacks.
Not I said means that there is cause for complacency, one unjustified shooting is too many, and the race involved is not important.
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