{"id":3327,"date":"2020-10-06T10:41:55","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T14:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=3327"},"modified":"2020-10-06T10:42:01","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T14:42:01","slug":"its-baked-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2020\/10\/06\/its-baked-in\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Baked In"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Again<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It happened again, this time in Texas.  A White, small town police officer arrived on the scene of a \u201cpossible fight at a gas station\u201d, the Kwik Check.  The fight was over, and an unarmed Black man was there, along with another man and a woman.  The Black man raised his hands and tried to explain what was going on.  When the officer moved to detain him, he started to walk away.  The officer used a Taser on him, and when that didn\u2019t work they way he wanted; he shot him with his service weapon.  The Black man died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was going on?  According to witnesses, the Black man, Jonathan Price, intervened inside the gas station when the other man assaulted the woman.  The two men fought, and the struggle moved outside.  Price, 31, a former college football player, was singled out when the officer arrived.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a brief investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), the Wolfe City police officer, 22 year-old Shaun Lucas, was arrested and charged with murder.  The Department noted that Lucas\u2019 actions were \u201cnot objectively reasonable\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Procedure <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I am not a police officer, but it should be procedure that when an officer arrives on the scene he or she should gain control of the situation.  Without knowing what happened before, the officer would want to make sure that the participants were \u201csafe\u201d from continuing to fight each other, or attacking the officer.  So it would be normal procedure to control both, and then sort out the situation.  And if I were that officer, I would focus on the \u201cbiggest\u201d threat, physically, to me.  The former college football player would probably fit that definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when he refused to be \u201cdetained\u201d, then that should be a concern to the officer.  But it is from that point, that the DPS felt \u201creasonable\u201d was lost.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many will say that Price should have submitted, and not tried to walk away.  \u201cIf he had only followed the lawful orders of the officer, he would still be alive today\u201d.  But that still doesn\u2019t answer the question:  if an unarmed suspect refuses to obey police orders, should deadly force be used?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We haven\u2019t heard Officer Lucas\u2019s side of the story, only from others who witnessed the event.  Did something happen when he Tazed Price that caused Lucas to feel threatened, in fear for his own safety?  It\u2019s the only answer that would make any sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But in the end, another unarmed Black man is dead, shot by the police.  And it is in that fact alone that we need to face the issue.  Somehow that\u2019s \u201cbaked in\u201d to the system.  Sure, Lucas was a young cop, alone in a small town, facing a situation he was unable to control.  But what were the other possibilities to \u201cdefuse\u201d the situation?  Maybe it was just a matter of having more police personnel there.  Or of the officer saying the \u201cright words\u201d to Price, or maybe just letting Price walk now, and Lucas comes back with more officers later.  Any of those would be better choices than shooting Price, better choices for both Price and Officer Lucas, now facing murder charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this about \u201cfunding\u201d the police?   Sure, if two officers were available, perhaps Lucas wouldn\u2019t have felt so threatened that he needed to use his weapon.  Or, if a trained \u201cnegotiator\/de-escalator\u201d were part of a team, then Price would have been able to tell his story, without the need for Tasers or guns.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numbers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But is this a racial thing?  The statistics are clear:  the chances of being killed by the police are much higher if you\u2019re Black, and even higher if you\u2019re a Black man. In the last nine months, 721 civilians have been shot by police, with 142 of them Black.  That\u2019s almost 20% of those killed, while Blacks are 13% of the population in the United States (Statista<\/a>).  For young Black men, the risk of being killed by police is 1 per 1000 (PNAS<\/a>).  Black men face a risk of being killed by the police more than three times greater than white men (PAA<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yes, it is about race.\u00a0\u00a0And it\u2019s about training.\u00a0\u00a0It’s about making a national decision that this isn\u2019t just about the \u201cbad apple\u201d cops.\u00a0\u00a0And no, I am NOT saying that police officers are racists (though there probably are some).\u00a0\u00a0What I am saying is that there is a problem, and we need to address that problem in a forthright manner.\u00a0\u00a0It is \u201cbaked in\u201d the system, and it needs to be fixed.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Again It happened again, this time in Texas.  A White, small town police officer arrived on the scene of a \u201cpossible fight at a gas station\u201d, the Kwik Check.  The fight was over, and an unarmed Black man was there, along with another man and a woman.  The Black man raised his hands and tried to explain what … Continue reading “It’s Baked In”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Baked In : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Another unarmed Black man shot by a police officer. 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