[Minneapolis Star Tribne] Anger builds after police shoot assault suspect in Minn

[woolfe9998]

A search of the Minnesota court records reveals that Clark had multiple prior felonies, including for aggravated armed robbery and terroristic threats. He spent most of the past five years in prison.

For me it's too early to form an opinion about what actually happened here, but I will say I find it improbable that the police, as one witness claimed, shot Clark "execution style" in the head when he was handcuffed and compliant. Remember, witnesses said substantially the same thing about Michael Brown, and it turned out to be a complete falsity. I could certainly imagine that they might have used excessive force (though so far I have no idea if they did), but it strikes me as very unlikely that they simply murdered Clark in cold blood. Why would they, particularly if (as is supposedly the case) there were numerous eyewitnesses? If these officers killed him unnecessarily I hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, however.

Don't know what really happened here, but I tend to agree with this in general, that police aren't likely to shoot someone in the head in full view of numerous witnesses.

This is what was alleged in the Oscar Grant case years back, that an allegedly racist BART cop executed Mr. Grant on a BART platform in full view of 20 witnesses and a security camera which he knew was there. It was complicated by the fact that the cop's story was that he mistakenly believed he had drawn his taser rather than his gun, a story of incredible negligence that in and of itself is sort of hard to believe. Still, it was more plausible than the alternative. The cop was appropriately convicted of manslaughter.

I suspect that in this case the worst the cop might be guilty of is criminal negligence. An intentional kill seems unlikely under the circumstances.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Don't know what really happened here, but I tend to agree with this in general, that police aren't likely to shoot someone in the head in full view of numerous witnesses.

This is what was alleged in the Oscar Grant case years back, that an allegedly racist BART cop executed Mr. Grant on a BART platform in full view of 20 witnesses and a security camera which he knew was there. It was complicated by the fact that the cop's story was that he mistakenly believed he had drawn his taser rather than his gun, a story of incredible negligence that in and of itself is sort of hard to believe. Still, it was more plausible than the alternative. The cop was appropriately convicted of manslaughter.

I suspect that in this case the worst the cop might be guilty of is criminal negligence. An intentional kill seems unlikely under the circumstances.

When the Grant case occurred I said, and still believe, that it was fairly obviously a mistake. The involved officer, Johannes Mehserle, looked totally shocked on the video after his gun went off, and it seemed clear he had believed he was firing a taser but, in the heat of the moment, had a brain fart and pulled his pistol. That was the jury's finding, and I believe they got it right.

This case doesn't seem to fit into that category, since it would seem unlikely the officer who shot Clark believed he was using any less-lethal weapon when he shot Clark in the head. Still, as I said before I find it unlikely he just murdered Clark in cold blood. A struggle seems like a likelier explanation for what happened here. I am open to having my mind changed, but in general I don't expect police officers to just kill suspects without provocation. (I know it does happen from time to time, and the question of whether there was sufficient provocation often arises, but still . . .)

 

[jackstar7]

Nope. But I can narrow the scope of my question. Are you saying there isn't a situation in which the police should use their guns with a reasonable likelihood of the intended target dying as a result?

I do think those situations exist, but I think those circumstances are, and should remain, rare.

And while this might be one of those situations... somehow... nothing reported about it suggests that it was.

I'd rather err on the side of not killing people.

 

[Ackmed]

Spike Lee calls out BLM activists. Which is very true. Try to say that on here though, and you get called a racist.

"We cannot be out there” protesting purported police violence “and then when it comes to young brothers killing themselves, then mums the word. No one’s saying nothing? It’s got to be both ends... but you can’t ignore that we are killing ourselves, too. We can’t ignore that."

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollyw...calls-black-lives-matter-cant-ignore-killing/

It is pretty sad that they are protesting and acting this way, over someone who appears to beat women and having a nice criminal record. All evidence points to him beaten a woman that night. This is who they want to protest about? I have zero empathy for people who abuse children or women. Not that anyone should be killed in the way these eyewitnesses allege. That is never right. Acting this way, with not enough information over someone like this is pretty idiotic to me.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Spike Lee calls out BLM activists. Which is very true. Try to say that on here though, and you get called a racist.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollyw...calls-black-lives-matter-cant-ignore-killing/

It is pretty sad that they are protesting and acting this way, over someone who appears to beat women and having a nice criminal record. All evidence points to him beaten a woman that night. This is who they want to protest about? I have zero empathy for people who abuse children or women. Not that anyone should be killed in the way these eyewitnesses allege. That is never right. Acting this way, with not enough information over someone like this is pretty idiotic to me.

I am a trial lawyer and have handled numerous defense cases on behalf of police officers, and one large, high-visibility case on behalf of a plaintiff suing the police. We got a large verdict in that case, so I have received many dozens of calls from would-be police plaintiffs since that time.

In my experience, the overwhelming majority of situations in which police wrongdoing is alleged begin as justified, because the police have a legitimate reason to have contact with the subject. The police then have some interaction that ends badly, and it becomes a dispute over whether the intervening events justified the use of force. By way of illustration, the police in LA were amply justified in pulling over Rodney King, who was driving something like 100 MPH and didn't stop when they hit him with lights and sirens. They were not, however, justified in beating him nearly to death once they got him stopped.

We don't have a clear sense of the facts underlying the Jamar Clark situation, but we do know he is a repeat, violent felon who was allegedly assaulting his girlfriend and blocking EMTs from helping her. Those data points seem to favor the police in terms of the outcome, but they are not a complete set of facts. We will have to see how things look once we obtain more information about the incident . . .

 

[DrPizza]

A search of the Minnesota court records reveals that Clark had multiple prior felonies, including for aggravated armed robbery and terroristic threats. He spent most of the past five years in prison.

For me it's too early to form an opinion about what actually happened here, but I will say I find it improbable that the police, as one witness claimed, shot Clark "execution style" in the head when he was handcuffed and compliant. Remember, witnesses said substantially the same thing about Michael Brown, and it turned out to be a complete falsity. I could certainly imagine that they might have used excessive force (though so far I have no idea if they did), but it strikes me as very unlikely that they simply murdered Clark in cold blood. Why would they, particularly if (as is supposedly the case) there were numerous eyewitnesses? If these officers killed him unnecessarily I hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, however.

In a nutshell, this. In my ideal world, it would be great if they were able to get a search warrant to search the phones of people who identified themselves as being witnesses - have those search warrants ready when the people showed up at the station to give their official statements. Then, if any of them had video which they deleted, and gave a sworn statement that contradicted the video - prosecute them as well.

 

[woolfe9998]

When the Grant case occurred I said, and still believe, that it was fairly obviously a mistake. The involved officer, Johannes Mehserle, looked totally shocked on the video after his gun went off, and it seemed clear he had believed he was firing a taser but, in the heat of the moment, had a brain fart and pulled his pistol. That was the jury's finding, and I believe they got it right.

This case doesn't seem to fit into that category, since it would seem unlikely the officer who shot Clark believed he was using any less-lethal weapon when he shot Clark in the head. Still, as I said before I find it unlikely he just murdered Clark in cold blood. A struggle seems like a likelier explanation for what happened here. I am open to having my mind changed, but in general I don't expect police officers to just kill suspects without provocation. (I know it does happen from time to time, and the question of whether there was sufficient provocation often arises, but still . . .)

I would agree, but there is always a possibility of an accidental discharge. In my view, based on what we know, a struggle and ensuing legitimate kill is the most probable scenario, followed by some sort of negligent kill, and lastly an intentional kill.

 

[Double Trouble]

A search of the Minnesota court records reveals that Clark had multiple prior felonies, including for aggravated armed robbery and terroristic threats. He spent most of the past five years in prison.

For me it's too early to form an opinion about what actually happened here, but I will say I find it improbable that the police, as one witness claimed, shot Clark "execution style" in the head when he was handcuffed and compliant. Remember, witnesses said substantially the same thing about Michael Brown, and it turned out to be a complete falsity. I could certainly imagine that they might have used excessive force (though so far I have no idea if they did), but it strikes me as very unlikely that they simply murdered Clark in cold blood. Why would they, particularly if (as is supposedly the case) there were numerous eyewitnesses? If these officers killed him unnecessarily I hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, however.

Voice o' reason right there. Agree 100%.

 

[child of wonder]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/us/minneapolis-jamar-clark-police-shooting/index.html

Yes, this will surely bring people to your cause....

 

[PokerGuy]

Anger builds? Where exactly is this anger building? Among idiots?

We have no idea what happened, and we've seen plenty of times already that claims made by witnesses of what happened don't mean a whole lot. Let the evidence speak, then decide if there should be outrage or not.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/us/minneapolis-jamar-clark-police-shooting/index.html

Yes, this will surely bring people to your cause....

The truth of the matter is no longer important...white cop shoots black guy is all the "truth" the pea-brained need.

 

[MajinCry]

The guy's a wife-beater (or, err, girlfriend-beater). And now he's dead.

Eh. I'll cope.

 

[BoberFett]

With so many valid instances of police harassment and brutality, why is BLM so bad at choosing its heroes?

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/17/us/minneapolis-jamar-clark-police-shooting/index.html

Yes, this will surely bring people to your cause....

This is a repeat of something that happened repeatedly here in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting.

We have an unusually large and . . . assertive BLM movement here. Many of the participants are white, but I think it's also a by-product of our very high black unemployment (Minnesota has the greatest disparity of unemployment between white and black people in the US). Because there are so many unemployed/unemployable black citizens here, there are a relatively large number of people with the free time to protest, as opposed to working. There are, not surprisingly, differing schools of thought about why that is the case, but I personally believe it's a by-product of our historically very generous social welfare benefits, which have a history of attracting poor people from throughout the upper midwest, and effectively incentivizing people to have children and not work. Unfortunately that means that we have essentially no black middle class - the great majority of our black citizens are below the poverty line. Living here (I moved back 10 years ago after many years living elsewhere) is a constant reminder of the perils of permitting people to live on public assistance for prolonged periods of time.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

With so many valid instances of police harassment and brutality, why is BLM so bad at choosing its heroes?

As I said earlier in this thread, instances of people being beaten or killed by police tend to begin with the subject behaving very badly, and the police legitimately becoming involved. As a result, what happens during the course of their interaction with the police is often something of a gray area. Very occasionally (as in the one plaintiff's police case I have handled), you have a truly innocent person who has a negative interaction with the police, but those cases are few and far between.

I suspect when the dust settles the Jamar Clark case will look quite a bit like the Michael Brown one, with initially damning eyewitness reports that turn out to be largely or totally false, and a shooting that was very likely justified. Certainly Jamar Clark was not Citizen of the Year material - he was a violent felon who was, apparently, in the middle of a series of violent crimes when he was shot.

The media, of course, bears a lot of the blame here. It's simply a more interesting story if they can report it, as they did with Michael Brown, as a promising, innocent, fully cooperative young man who is cut down in the prime of his life by racist cops. The truth is either willfully or negligently ignored in favor of telling a compelling, ratings-grabbing story.

 

[NaughtyGeek]

Let me preface all this with the statement that the victim has been proven to be a complete POS, however:

[/ranton]
I want to know what happened to the time when doing something stupid in the presence of police didn't get you killed. Once upon a time, if you failed to obey a police command you were subdued and taken into custody to answer for your alleged crimes. This was before the police even had the ever handy taser gun.

I don't see anything mentioned about this idiot having a weapon yet he was shot dead. This is a problem regardless of all the window dressing the peons are putting on it. It is past time that it be made clear to police that shooting someone is not an appropriate action except in the most extreme of cases, you know, those cases where someones life is actually at risk.

These BLM reerees do nothing to facilitate addressing the actual problem with their insistence that people are being killed simply because they are black. In fact, they make it easy for the majority of people to overlook the whole matter because of their ignorance. Meanwhile police response continually escalates because they are simply no longer trained to be the peace officers they were meant to be.
[/rantoff]

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Let me preface all this with the statement that the victim has been proven to be a complete POS, however:

[/ranton]
I want to know what happened to the time when doing something stupid in the presence of police didn't get you killed. Once upon a time, if you failed to obey a police command you were subdued and taken into custody to answer for your alleged crimes. This was before the police even had the ever handy taser gun.

I don't see anything mentioned about this idiot having a weapon yet he was shot dead. This is a problem regardless of all the window dressing the peons are putting on it. It is past time that it be made clear to police that shooting someone is not an appropriate action except in the most extreme of cases, you know, those cases where someones life is actually at risk.

These BLM reerees do nothing to facilitate addressing the actual problem with their insistence that people are being killed simply because they are black. In fact, they make it easy for the majority of people to overlook the whole matter because of their ignorance. Meanwhile police response continually escalates because they are simply no longer trained to be the peace officers they were meant to be.
[/rantoff]

That is an absolutely legitimate point, and one that shouldn't get lost in the larger discussion. I have no idea whether what the police did in this instance was justified, but I agree with you that situations like this (that is, unarmed subjects being killed by police) should be very rare. Statistically they are in fact quite rare, but it's not unreasonable to ask hard questions when an unarmed young man is killed. That doesn't mean the officers did anything wrong, but it's certainly a possibility (though I continue to consider it very unlikely that, as the eyewitnesses claim, a police officer executed a fully-compliant Jamar Clark).

 

[child of wonder]

This is a repeat of something that happened repeatedly here in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting.

We have an unusually large and . . . assertive BLM movement here. Many of the participants are white, but I think it's also a by-product of our very high black unemployment (Minnesota has the greatest disparity of unemployment between white and black people in the US). Because there are so many unemployed/unemployable black citizens here, there are a relatively large number of people with the free time to protest, as opposed to working. There are, not surprisingly, differing schools of thought about why that is the case, but I personally believe it's a by-product of our historically very generous social welfare benefits, which have a history of attracting poor people from throughout the upper midwest, and effectively incentivizing people to have children and not work. Unfortunately that means that we have essentially no black middle class - the great majority of our black citizens are below the poverty line. Living here (I moved back 10 years ago after many years living elsewhere) is a constant reminder of the perils of permitting people to live on public assistance for prolonged periods of time.

Not to derail the thread but as a fellow Minnesotan I completely agree. One needs only watch the Costco or Sam's Club checkout line to see scores of Somalian women, covered head to toe, talking on their iPhones, carrying expensive designer purses, and carrying wads of cash yet paying for their groceries with EBT cards and WIC.

Minnesotans are generous and giving people and, sadly, some take advantage of that fact which is why we have some of the highest taxes in the country.

 

[woolfe9998]

That is an absolutely legitimate point, and one that shouldn't get lost in the larger discussion. I have no idea whether what the police did in this instance was justified, but I agree with you that situations like this (that is, unarmed subjects being killed by police) should be very rare. Statistically they are in fact quite rare, but it's not unreasonable to ask hard questions when an unarmed young man is killed. That doesn't mean the officers did anything wrong, but it's certainly a possibility (though I continue to consider it very unlikely that, as the eyewitnesses claim, a police officer executed a fully-compliant Jamar Clark).

Sorry but I'm going to use your post as a jumping off point for a lengthy discussion. There are statistics cited which pertain to controversial issues so it's worth looking at this in spite of the TLDR post.

I'm not so sure that the bold statement above is correct. I believed that until literally this morning when, finally fed up with these discussions of individual cases which are just anecdotal evidence, I started looking around for statistics pertaining to officer involved killings. The federal government (FBI) does not keep comprehensive statistics on it (they do keep them but it is only a fraction of the total). I think it has to do with a lack of cooperation from local agencies.

However, there have been two media studies this year which gather all the cases reported in media outlets both local and national. Many of the statistics defied my personal assumptions and expectations.

According to the Guardian study, 22% of officer involved shooting deaths involved an unarmed suspect. According to the Washington Post study, examining a different sample, 13% were unarmed. Not sure about the discrepancy since there is some overlap in the samples, but if we just average the two we come with 17-18% of the cases involving an unarmed suspect. While the vast majority involved armed suspects, 17-18% is not what I would call "rare."

There are numerous other data points which are of interest to anyone concerned about officer involved killings. The most significant pertain to minorities, which is obviously where the largest controversy lies at the moment. This too defied my expectations as I have often taken the position that very few officer involved killings of black men involved an element of racism.

The trouble isn't the disproportionate number of killings of blacks, even though the discrepancy remains to some extent even after factoring out different crime rates. More interesting is the chance the person was unarmed broken down by ethnicity. Both studies have disturbing findings. In the Guardian study:

If you were black and killed by the cops, there is a 33% chance you were unarmed.

If you were hispanic and killed by the cops, there is a 25% chance you were unarmed.

If you were white and killed by the cops, there is a 15% chance you were unarmed.

This is a seriously problematic stat for those who believe there is little to no racial bias in the system. I can't think of any good explanation for such a high percentage of blacks killed by police were unarmed while the percentage for whites was less than half.

To be sure, I don't think these officers are killing unarmed black people for kicks just because they're racist. It's more likely there is a subtle bias at play where the person's life is simply not valued to the same extent because they are black, and hence the officers are less careful, more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.

Also, officers are virtually never charged, not for murder or even for manslaughter. There were 3 cases in the over 400 examined by WaPo where the officers were charged with crimes. That same study found about 50 cases of an unarmed suspect being killed. Is it really likely that the officer was culpable in only about 1% of the total cases, and only about 7% of the cases involving unarmed suspects? Remember, "culpable" means murder OR manslaughter at a minimum.

I may start a separate thread for discussing these stats. There is a ton of information which is of interest.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/black-americans-killed-by-police-analysis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...22256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Sorry but I'm going to use your post as a jumping off point for a lengthy discussion. There are statistics cited which pertain to controversial issues so it's worth looking at this in spite of the TLDR post.

I'm not so sure that the bold statement above is correct. I believed that until literally this morning when I started looking around for statistics pertaining to officer involved killings. The federal government (FBI) does not keep comprehensive statistics on it (they do keep them but it is only a fraction of the total). I think it has to do with a lack of cooperation from local agencies.

However, there have been two media studies this year which gather all the cases reported in media outlets both local and national. Many of the statistics defied my personal assumptions and expectations.

According to the Guardian study, 22% of officer involved shooting deaths involved an unarmed suspect. According to the Washington Post study, examining a different sample, 13% were unarmed. Not sure about the discrepancy since there is some overlap in the samples, but if we just average the two we come with 17-18% of the cases involving an unarmed suspect. While the vast majority involved armed suspects, 17-18% is not what I would call "rare."

There are numerous other data points which are of interest to anyone concerned about officer involved killings. The most significant pertain to minorities, which is obviously where the largest controversy lies at the moment. This too defied my expectations as I have often taken the position that very few officer involved killings of black men involved an element of racism.

The trouble isn't the disproportionate number of killings of blacks, even though the discrepancy remains to some extent even after factoring out different crime rates. More interesting is the chance the person was unarmed broken down by ethnicity. Both studies have disturbing findings. In the Guardian study:

If you were black and killed by the cops, there is a 33% chance you were unarmed.

If you were hispanic and killed by the cops, there is a 25% chance you were unarmed.

If you were white and killed by the cops, there is a 15% chance you were unarmed.

This is a seriously problematic stat for those who believe there is little to no racial bias in the system. I can't think of any good explanation for such a high percentage of blacks killed by police were unarmed while the percentage for whites was less than half.

To be sure, I don't think these officers are killing unarmed black people for kicks just because they're racist. It's more likely there is a subtle bias at play where the person's life is simply not valued to the same extent because they are black, and hence the officers are less careful, more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.

Also, officers are virtually never charged, not for murder or even for manslaughter. There were 3 cases in the over 400 examined by WaPo where the officers were charged with crimes. That same study found about 50 cases of an unarmed suspect being killed. Is it really likely that the officer was culpable in only about 1% of the total cases, and only about 7% of the cases involving unarmed suspects? Remember, "culpable" means murder OR manslaughter at a minimum.

I may start a separate thread for discussing these stats. There is a ton of information which is of interest.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/01/black-americans-killed-by-police-analysis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...22256a-058e-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html

When I said "quite rare," I didn't mean in comparison to situations in which the police killed armed suspects - I meant, as a whole, relative to the total number of interactions between the police and civilians.

In terms of the racial disparities you observe, they are certainly interesting. It can be problematic to view these sorts of numbers as a whole, when in fact the use of force in each case was presumably motivated by a particular set of facts, rather than broad tendencies.

I will say that although it may be true that some officers, particularly white officers, view black lives as somehow less valuable, it is also true that ALL officers with any level of experience know that black and hispanic male subjects, particularly black ones, are far far likelier than anyone else to commit violent crimes. This is unimpeachably true, though the underlying causes are complex. Black males, who represent less than 7% of the population, commit roughly half of all homicides, for example.

In this context, it's likely an officer, regardless of the officer's ethnicity, will view a young black male subject as more threatening than, say, a white or Asian subject. It is also empirically true that a young black male subject IS more threatening, statistically speaking, than any other age/race/gender variety of human being in the United States. This presumably results in the officer being more on-edge and fearful, and the subject's actions being viewed in that light.

In any case, the whole issue is complex, and I really feel for the great majority of people of color who are decent people but who are consistently treated with skepticism due to the color of their skin. It's a shitty state of affairs, and one that is not likely to change anytime soon.

 

[Darwin333]

The michael brown incident helped remind us how worthless witnesses are a lot of the time.

While the general public and the justice system as a whole put a ton of faith in eyewitness testimony it has been proven beyond any doubt that it is the absolute worst kind of evidence. Hell science doesn't even consider it evidence at all.

With that said, we aren't talking about fine details here. We are talking about if a man was handcuffed and subdued or if he was a threat to someones life which is pretty darn easy to get right by eyewitnesses. Their credibility is another question all together.

 

[Darwin333]

The police carry guns for a reason. Are you saying there is not a situation in which using them is the right thing to do?

Big difference between "right thing to do" and "honorable". I couldn't imagine I'd ever feel "honorable" about taking a life, righteous maybe but honorable no.

 

[MrPickins]

In a nutshell, this. In my ideal world, it would be great if they were able to get a search warrant to search the phones of people who identified themselves as being witnesses - have those search warrants ready when the people showed up at the station to give their official statements. Then, if any of them had video which they deleted, and gave a sworn statement that contradicted the video - prosecute them as well.

Sounds like a fishing expedition. Why would the police/court assume they have video of the event?

 

[woolfe9998]

When I said "quite rare," I didn't mean in comparison to situations in which the police killed armed suspects - I meant, as a whole, relative to the total number of interactions between the police and civilians.

In terms of the racial disparities you observe, they are certainly interesting. It can be problematic to view these sorts of numbers as a whole, when in fact the use of force in each case was presumably motivated by a particular set of facts, rather than broad tendencies.

I will say that although it may be true that some officers, particularly white officers, view black lives as somehow less valuable, it is also true that ALL officers with any level of experience know that black and hispanic male subjects, particularly black ones, are far far likelier than anyone else to commit violent crimes. This is unimpeachably true, though the underlying causes are complex. Black males, who represent less than 7% of the population, commit roughly half of all homicides, for example.

In this context, it's likely an officer, regardless of the officer's ethnicity, will view a young black male subject as more threatening than, say, a white or Asian subject. It is also empirically true that a young black male subject IS more threatening, statistically speaking, than any other age/race/gender variety of human being in the United States. This presumably results in the officer being more on-edge and fearful, and the subject's actions being viewed in that light.

In any case, the whole issue is complex, and I really feel for the great majority of people of color who are decent people but who are consistently treated with skepticism due to the color of their skin. It's a shitty state of affairs, and one that is not likely to change anytime soon.

What you're saying, in essence, is that if two officers each face the exact same situation with literally the only difference being that one suspect is white while the other is black, the black man might end up dead entirely for that reason. I understand your rationale, but I also understand that the subtlety here might be lost on the black community, who would view it as evidence of racial bias in the system, and not unreasonably. Can you imagine being given this explanation if your son or husband was killed for this reason?

Would you think that what you describe is a valid defense for a manslaughter charge? Since criminal negligence is essentially based on what is reasonable under the circumstances, can an officer argue that the victim's race, and the officers perception of what that means, should be taken into consideration? I would hope that such a defense would be disallowed in court. I shudder at the implications if we were to even allow such a defense.

I think this sort of profiling could perhaps in some scenario justify decisions about who gets stopped, what neighborhoods the officer visits, etc. But as an explanation for why the officer pulls the trigger in one case and not another, I think we have to say that profiling doesn't cut it any more. The police need to do better than that when someone's life is at stake. We have a right to demand as much.

You're probably correct that this plays a role in actual practice. I also think it's very akin to why we don't seem to care as much if lots of people die in a country like, say, Turkey, as opposed to people dying in, say, France. Life is cheap among the unwashed masses of the third world. Poor people are perceived as less productive members of society. Black people are seen as having low socio-economic status, so their lives just don't "matter" as much.

These studies I link are suggesting that the cops need better training. Even in situations where the cop is within his legal right to shoot, there are times when the officer's behavior was unnecessarily provocative and contributed to a situation where the officer was then in reasonable fear for his life, but it didn't have to escalate to that in the first place.

And these officers are almost never being charged. I have to call BS when in only 3 cases out of 450 total kills, and 3 of 60 kills of an unarmed suspect, is the officer culpable of criminal negligence or worse. I don't think we should ever allow the police to investigate themselves. It needs to be handled by another agency, every time. State laws should be changed to address this because right now the cops just don't understand that there may be consequences when they decide to just shoot first and ask questions later.

 

[Pipeline 1010]

And these officers are almost never being charged. I have to call BS when in only 3 cases out of 450 total kills, and 3 of 60 kills of an unarmed suspect, is the officer culpable of criminal negligence or worse.

Keep in mind that just being charged means next to nothing if you are a cop. They almost always beat the charges or end up with a slap on the wrist. Out of those 450 total kills, there might have actually been no convictions; there certainly weren't any murder convictions. The immunity that cops enjoy is a thing of awe.

I don't think we should ever allow the police to investigate themselves. It needs to be handled by another agency, every time. State laws should be changed to address this because right now the cops just don't understand that there may be consequences when they decide to just shoot first and ask questions later.

I almost think it doesn't matter what kind of setup you get to investigate cops. Almost every type of investigative or oversight group I've ever heard of quickly becomes stacked with former cops or some other type of ardent supporters of cops. Hell we can't even get a jury of regular Joes to convict a cop who shot a guy who was face down on the ground, surrendering, and had his arms out and hands visible. How are we going to set up a regulatory body that can actually do their jobs even if the accused is a cop?