“These senseless murders have had a profound impact on police and the communities they serve”, Jamieson said in a statement.
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There is an nearly instinctual presumption, perhaps underscored through training in the academy and socialization at locker rooms, that any confrontation with a black person, is unsafe, and life threatening even if it is only a traffic stop. Add to this the equally recent shooting death of a black man, already pinned down by the officers, shot at point blank range. The behavior here also suggests that this black man despite being already physically constrained, is extremely risky, and the only way to prevent harm to the officers, is to shoot him dead.
Malik Aziz, deputy chief at the Dallas Police Department and chairman of the National Black Police Association, said in an email, “I think what (a) sad state that we are in”. The test subjects were not told the objective of the research, which was conducted between August 2012 and November 2013, before the issue of race in policing reached the fever pitch of prominence that it possesses today. He was a black militant who hated the police (among others). James hypothesized that officers were second-guessing themselves when confronting black suspects, due to their awareness of the potential negative repercussions of shooting a black suspect. Brown is a courageous police chief in Dallas, who acted professionally, and did everything possible to protect the public and fellow officers when a lone gunman turned a peaceful protest deadly. Several wrapped their arms around young children and others swallowed back tears as emotional tributes were delivered by fellow police officers.
“This has to happen not just at the top level with the police captain”, he adds, “but also with the police officer on the street”. West and others pointed to the fact that Mr. Obama attended the July 12 memorial services for five Dallas police officers, that officials said were slain by Micah Xavier Johnson versus the telephone calls he placed to family members of Mr.
The meeting with United States attorney general Loretta Lynch, FBI director James Comey and Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson came hours after Mr Obama published an open letter to U.S. law enforcement seeking to counter criticism that he’s indifferent to the plight of police amid tensions with minority communities.
Blacks and whites have got to communicate better.
The “war on cops” meme has been deployed over the years because it works so well to shut down discussions about police reform. The Detroit force is about two-thirds black. According to NBC News, Lynch told the officers that their voices were “needed now more than ever”. But if so, perhaps similar allegations against majority-white forces are, too. It did not, for example, point out how the pressure for evermore laws by the left contributes to the conditions in which police violence thrives, an idea that comports with numerous things Republicans claim they believe in.
Two final pieces of data challenge the narrative that there is an epidemic of racially biased police shootings in the country. Louisville’s homicide rate is up 29 percent from previous year. Killing police officers is wrong. “I believe there needs to be a change”. But officers have changed their tune on Brown’s leadership after a gunman killed four of his cops.
“Officers are legitimately feeling under siege”, said Christine Choe, a contract psychologist for law enforcement agencies.
But what is one to do if those who are charged with keeping the peace, and enforcing the law, are quick to judge by the color of one’s skin, with very lethal results?
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It’s time to include police officers who don’t speak code talk, who are honest in their assessments and have lived experiences as both a minority and police officer from which to draw. The Memorial Fund does not have data on the race of cop-killers in 2015, but applying the historical average over the last decade in which 40 percent of all cop-killers were black would yield 21 cops killed by blacks in 2015.
