aljazeera | Here is something else that is not really in dispute: all of these responding officers were too close. Much too close.
In defense of the cops in each of these shootings, you will hear
pundits and police and even some of the offending officers tell you they
had little time to react. They will say that it was a split-second
decision on whether to shoot; that they had to react quickly or risk
being hurt or killed themselves.
But the reason the cops felt this pressure, the reason they feared
for their safety, be it from a toy gun, an unseen knife, or a fist full
of cigarillos, is because they were too close to properly assess the
situation or react in a more measured and considered manner.
This shouldn’t come as a revelation to those officers or outside
observers. It has been documented in a number of reports over a number
of years that police tactics when it comes to deescalating
confrontations with scared, angry, threatening or mentally ill citizens — or not even “suspects,” just subjects — are desperately lacking. By those studies, the officers in the three incidents recounted here did pretty much everything wrong.
Add to that the documented bias in the way society perceives African American men (as dangerous, erratic, aggressive, super-human), and you have what has now been demonstrated to be a lethal mix.
But because these events are so documented and demonstrated, they should also be correctable. Surely, “start x kind of interaction y
feet away” is not that hard to teach, especially when the benefits
convey just as much to the officer as they do to any potential victim.
