Theres a difference between race being a factor in mass shooting (FSU library shooting) and race being a factor in police shooting in my eyes. I don’t think these two situations are equivalent.
I am concerned about some of the rhetoric I see in these cases, because I think it can hamper our ability to understand what is happening. I absolutely think race is a major causative factor in these incidents. But I don’t think anybody is being executed for failing to have a front license plate. I don’t think police are picking out black motorists to kill. These are not premeditated murders. Rather (in my opinion), they are gross overreactions based on a race-based view of what constitutes a threat.
So, what do you do to prevent this from happening? If my evaluation of the cause is correct, you may not have much success in trying to find the “bad eggs” and getting them off the force. Instead, you need to change the attitudes of all the police, probably through better training. That’s hard work, though.
I’m not saying that you don’t prosecute this particular guy. You do. But you also want to prevent all the gray-area cases in which it’s really hard to prosecute the police officer.
It hasn’t been determined yet how much race factored into the Cincinnati death. I could see the same thing happening to a white scraggly looking guy driving a 25 year old car that didn’t look right to the cop suspecting the scraggly looking guy was a meth-head with dope in his pockets or in the car. Happens everyday innocents getting rousted by over zealous bad cops.
How many scraggly looking white guys get shot by the police? Here’s a piece that sheds some light on the subject: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/being-arrested-is-nearly-twice-as-deadly-for-african-americans-as-whites/
Race very much factors into the Cincinnati death, and in almost all deaths of Blacks by White cops. The reason is simple, bias. We are profiled more than any other race, and most importantly we are feared more than any other race. I dont have a problem that Mr. Dubose was stopped for not having a plate, it happens all the time around UC. The problem is, officers always, believe “their lives are in danger”, when many times that is just not true. We have two recent cases where, the officer produced incident reports that were out and out lies, but for the video they wouldve been exonerated
In the SC case, the cop said he went for my taser, in this case, the cop said he was drug down the street by the car. Both of which, as we now see were utter lies, and what makes it even worse , fellow officers corroborated their stories each time.
Honestly, I dont know how many stories can happen before non-blacks believe we are not making this stuff up.
Lots of white guys get shot by cops…but it is apparent though that a disproportionate number of blacks get shot by cops…cops shoot black men more often. No one has a firm number of how many people get shot by cops in America each year…not even the FBI knows for sure as reporting by police agencies is spotty and not uniform.
This might be an obvious statement, but I think that in some places, crime statistics play a heavy part in a cop’s conditioned thought processes. We can blame poverty, or the courts, or the breakdown of the family unit, or all three (and we would be right to include them in any assessment of blame) - but the fact is, the violent crime rate among African-Americans is much higher per-capita than it is for whites and asians and somewhat higher than it is for hispanics. If you are a police officer pulling someone over, you might have those stats in the back of your head. Or you have your own personal experiences on your mind, or stories from other officers.
So how do we help cops to “calm down” when they are pulling over or addressing African-Americans and (to a lesser degree) hispanic people? How do we condition them to treat all people the same? Maybe we need to figure out some type of psychological mechanism to help cops put the anecdotes and stats out of their minds so that they can focus on the person in the car and base their actions on only what that person is doing.
Obviously, the vast majority of all traffic stops are and will continue to be peaceful. Most interaction between the cops and us is peaceful. I hope someone can figure out a way to train a calmer and fairer – yet still aware, prepared, and professional – police force. Because it looks like that’s what we need.
I would assume that if the campus police are real police, they would have sworn officers who are armed as is typical for police officers in that area.
@partyof5 I’m sorry to say that there is a segment that will never believe it, no matter how much incontrovertible proof there is. But I also think that many many whites have had their eyes opened over the last year. I know I have. Before Ferguson, I had a suspicion that blacks were treated differently by law enforcement. Now I know for sure, and I have some idea how bad it is. I hope you won’t lump all whites in with those who are impervious to undeniable facts.
IMO this Cincinnati case shows how far we’ve come, and how far we’ve not come.
First, the UC police dept. was not permitted to investigate itself. Self-investigation as a tool to unearth the truth and obtain justice is laughable on its face, and there’s a long and unfortunate history of police (or their allies, prosecutors) exonerating themselves in racial-profiling cases. We now have an example of the authorities understanding that, and operating in good faith to find the actual truth. We should find that heartening.
Second, the investigation moved quickly. We have seen jurisdictions drag their feet, apparently hoping the matter would just go away, as it always did in the past. Ferguson took, what?, five months to decide that Officer Wilson did nothing wrong. That delay inevitably led to community passions simmering and simmering and finally boiling over in frustration. That didn’t happen in Cincinnati because the authorities moved swiftly. They understood that their first duty was to the community, not to the police department, and they made it their mission to get answers to the community as quickly as possible.
Third, we have a prosecutor who called the DuBose incident exactly what it was: a “chicken cr@p” traffic stop. Blacks are still subjected to racial profiling on the most flimsy of pretexts, as this case clearly shows. But IMO it’s encouraging that an authority was wiling to say it publicly. In the cases of Brown, Garner, Scott, and so many others, those minor violations have been used by some to justify murder and that did not happen here. Again, heartening.
Fourth, body cams. They work.
On the downside, this case gives us a shocking demonstration of the stubborn circle-the-wagons police culture. We often hear that yes, there are a few bad apples among our police, but by and large they are honest. And yet, not only did Officer Tensing lie in his report – all of the other officers backed him up in theirs. And this despite all of them knowing that the incident was recorded on video. They must have had a great deal of faith that the prosecutor would ignore the evidence, and IMO that kind of faith could only be based on past experience. Officers in Cincinnati are now on notice that the brass isn’t going to cover for them, and we can hope that other officers around the country will notice too.
The police/prosecutor mutual-support dynamic is entrenched, and will not go away any time soon. But this case gives us a beacon of hope. I don’t think we could have said that a year ago.
So sad. However, stop trying to lump this shooting in with Michael Brown’s. Different situations. Different people.
We don’t know that. We have only Officer Wilson’s word, and surely by now we don’t take officer reports/testimony at face value.
But omit Brown. Do you otherwise agree?
@LasMa great summation. I will add there is a bit of disdain between the city cops and uc cops, so I am not so sure if it had been a city cop if the investigation wouldve move as quickly. However, city leaders did not want a repeat of the riots of when Timothy Thomas was killed, and the cop got off. Again, it was another case of the guy was running from the cops, and cops thought he had a gun, he was unarmed, and he was shot in the back.
Yeah, LasMa, besides that I think you had a good summation. In other cases, such as the Garner case, I was surprised that charges were not brought. It’s just my personal position that Wilson was innocent.
I’ll add another new thing that happened in this case: transparency. The prosecutor did not seek refuge in the secrecy of the grand jury.
Contrary to popular belief, we just want folks to be held accountable. Most times the officers arent being charged, and they just take their word, and the investigation is over.
@prezbucky. Very good points and I don’t know what the answer is to eliminate the fear.
I live in Cincinnati so I am close to this. I also know the prosecutor personally. He absolutely did the right thing with not releasing the video before the inditment. There were lawyers trying to sue the prosecutors office to release the video. He stuck to his decision. I am convinced our city would of seen riots and/or violence if the video was released.
Everyone here totally agrees with the Prosecutor.
Also from Cincinnati, and while I’m not typically a big fan of the prosecutor, he did the right thing here, including his refusal to release the video until after the indictment was announced.
We show them that when their reports and statements contradict the evidence, it’s the evidence which will be believed. They’ll catch on eventually.
Add me to the list that progress has definitely been made since this time last year. Much of white america is aware of what has been going on a noticeable amount are speaking against it.
I did my residency in Cincinnati. This was before the bad riots, but there has always been racial tension in the city. The children’s hospital is in a sketchy part of town (as are many teaching hospitals; partly because you serve many patients in that part of town). The area is near the UC campus as well. One of my fellow residents was a really quiet, very gentle African American guy from Georgia. Clean shaven, super short hair. Kind of roly-poly. He got stopped all. the. time. He drove a Honda Accord. We started telling him to always wear his scrubs when he drove to and from work, always wear his stethoscope around his neck, always keep his medical bag on the front seat so it was visible, always wear his ID badge. I just hated that. Anyone who says race isn’t a factor is totally delusional. I do think it’s better in Cincy than it used to be; but there is still tension.