Staying-home-while-black
by Tom Sullivan
Body cam footage shows mentally ill Jason Harrison walking out his door holding a screwdriver moments before being shot and killed by Dallas police, 2014.
"This is a serious question: What can a black person do to keep from getting killed by police in this country?" Eugene Robinson asks this morning in the Washington Post.
It is as if black people are in season and for police that season runs year-round.
Quick backstory from Vox:
At around 2 am local time on October 12, a neighbor of 28-year-old Atatiana Koquice Jefferson called a non-emergency hotline, saying he was concerned about an open door at the woman’s residence and wanted to make sure she was okay. According to a statement released by the Fort Worth Police Department, officers arrived at the home at around 2:25 am to respond to an “open structure call” and, after seeing the open door, walked around the perimeter of the residence.Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was in her bedroom playing a video game with her 8-year-old nephew. The officer who shot through her window resigned from the force hours before he was to be fired. Aaron Dean, 34, has been charged with murder. Footage here.
The department said that while doing so, officers saw a person inside standing near a window. “Perceiving a threat the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” police said.
If so, then an officer is always right to shoot in any dangerous encounter. Or potentially dangerous. Or conceivably dangerous. Or most any time.The No. 1 duty of a police officer is to be sure citizens are safe at the beginning and end of their shifts and inside their own homes. But that's not what warrior cops learn formally and informally. It's a training issue.
If self-preservation is the first and foremost priority of a police officer, then you get what we have seen in recent months and years — a series of unsettling police shootings.
You get what we saw on that video released last week showing Dallas police shooting a mentally ill man nonchalantly holding a screwdriver in his hands.
You get the questions swirling around the shooting death last month of an unarmed man said to be approaching a Grapevine officer with his hands raised.
It would explain other such shootings in situations that seemed to pose no immediate threat to officers.
Maybe it’s time to quit nodding along and question the maxim that going home at the end of the day trumps all other considerations.
It will not do to write this off as just a horrible mistake — not when such mistakes fit such a clear pattern. Far too often, officers approach situations involving African Americans with racist assumptions. They see a deadly threat where none exists. They act in ways that escalate the situation rather than calm it down. They are too quick to draw their weapons and too quick to fire. They shoot first and ask questions later.While knocking doors once for a local candidate, the first thing I saw when one door opened was a hand holding a small kitchen knife. I stepped back. The friendly woman holding it had been cutting vegetables in her kitchen. Had she been black and I a white police officer, I might have shot her then and there and walked away uncharged.
Racist attitudes lead to tragic outcomes. Until departments banish those attitudes, until officers’ default assumption is that black Americans are not suspects but citizens, more innocents like Atatiana Jefferson will die.