Current Affairs The " another shooting in America " thread
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carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
For me, given what we know at this point, it’s akin to a drunk driver killing someone. I don’t believe it was her intent but it was gross negligence with a horrific outcome, and she should be prosecuted as such.
carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
Tubes, I get what you’re saying in this thread partially. Overall at a population level, people of color do get shot at higher rates, but there are also numbers out there that say when accounting for the number of police encounters for a given population, you’re statistically not much likely more to be shot if you’re one thing vs another. I actually think I recall American Indians having the highest rate of fatal shootings at the hands of police. Yet we do seem to default to police shootings always having a racial motive when an African American is involved. In some cases there is and in some there definitely isn’t. I agree that in this case it didn’t seem racially motivated.
Now to your other point in a different post, I’m a huge advocate of personal accountability as it seems you are. I think we as a society lack that in a huge way. You make a decision, you should own the consequences of that decision. But in this case, it’s her poor action that vastly outweighs his and the consequence he faced was the ultimate price. It’s her personal responsibility to handle herself properly, and she didn’t. She needs to face the consequences of that because a man died as a result of her personal actions and negligence.
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carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
It’s a tough one LL. If the thinking is that police shouldn’t draw any sort of weapon until the suspect does, that’s not going to end well either. Given the video and that his record showed a prior gun charge, I think a taser would’ve been the correct move had it been done properly.
Tbf that isn’t what I said which was
“Yes. to me tasing does seem an overreaction when the arrest is due to a misdemeanor (ie not prior history of violence) and there are no threats of violence displayed or weapons idenitified. He wasn’t some murderer who was trying to escape so he could go on another rampage - as far as I’m aware he had an unpaid fine of ~$300 and an air freshener. What exactly was the societal threat if they had let him drive off and picked him up later?”
and secondly
“Even if you feel they have to attempt to stop him then and there why does that mean they instantly have to escalate to the most aggressive action short of shooting and that carries its own risks all by itself? Why not try talking and deescalation of tensions? Every person armed with even gun or knife isn’t instantly tased on the spot.”
I appreciate that these are difficult situations and everyone is stressed but generally I feel that deescalation techniques are under utilized in the US.
carolinablue232
Player Valuation: £70m
Apparently the warrant was for missing court on an unregistered gun charge and fleeing from police a different time. So it’a possible they saw the gun charges in his record which is a bit more than just some air fresheners and a fine which was the initial story I saw as well.
I think the risk with the bolded here is that if that’s the precedent set, why wouldn’t everyone just resist and flee every time they can knowing they’ll just let you go and maybe pick you up later where you can do it again? At some point proper non-lethal force had to come into play. It’s just really hard to know what that line should be.
Hopefully we get more detail on the timeline in the coming days that will make things clearer such as why they pulled him over initially, what information the officers saw between the stop and the attempted arrest etc.
As for the second bit, yes I agree it is a risk that it would encourage fleeing but that would also result in pretty hefty legal charges for those that did it (likely larger than the original misdemeanor ones) so not quite sure how it would work out in practice. And if it did reduce police shootings and general tensions would that not be a decent trade?
Not claiming I have the answers here, just feel that the current rules seem to have some very obvious downsides, for both potential arrestees and police, so I feel exploring some alternatives should be considered.
Also
I've said that though. It's involuntary manslaughter from the officer. She'll face the consequences - you can't make a mistake like that and get away with it, unintentional or not.
However, what I'm highlighting is the narrative that she shot him because he was black. She didn't. The narrative completely ignores what this fella did - tried to escape arrest and jumping in a car to flee, while having outstanding warrants for violent acts btw; again, totally ignored.
My grievance is with the way these incidents are used regardless of context as an excuse to protest/riot/vandalise. This isn't a racially motivated incident. If people were rational and able to apply context, they'd come to the correct conclusion - she shot him because she was an idiot and he was an idiot.
But no, they don't want context - they want an excuse, any excuse. George Floyd protests, completely justified. These ones? No. And not enough people are calling that out.
I think this is one of the areas we fundamentally disagree Tubey, you see it in very stark terms with very little gray - it was either a racially motivated shooting or not.
Whereas I believe it is more complex given the overall context - for instance in this case did Wright being black make it more likely that he was stopped for an air freshener (if that was the reason for he being pulled over) and start the whole chain of events in process?
Did the history of racial police actions mean that Wright‘s “fight or flight“ response was more likely to kick in than it would for a white person in the exact same circumstances?
Does even a subconscious bias mean that police officers view African Americans as more dangerous and therefore decrease the time before force (either lethal or less lethal like tasers) is used?
You seem certain that the exact same thing would have happened if Wright had been white as sadly happened here - having lived in the US a long time now I just can’t be so certain.
OK so a few things.
Yes, the likelihood of him running is increased due to a fear of police. That is a symptom of consistent racial bias in policing.
Yes, there's a lower bar for physical force/gun usage on black people from police for the same reason.
I am not, nor would you ever catch me, denying the racism in American policing. Its as clear as it gets that it exists.
However... This isn't one of those cases where those factors come into play. I think the police tase anyone who acts the way he did, regardless of colour. He ran because of a warrant, which meant the bar for doing so was lowered by him.
To therefore protest this as police violence against blacks is wholly incorrect. It is police incompetence against a man who should have been tased, not shot. That's the be all, end all of it as far as I'm concerned.
People need to flag race issues when they exist, not pretend one exists in any given incident to further a cause, because doing so is a disservice to it.
It is, purely because he wouldn't have been pulled over for such a weakass reason if he was white.
Thanks for replying, as I say we have different views on it as I don’t think the evidence is there that these factors didn’t come into play.
Tbf he still might, police do tend to have their quotas of stops, but I’d be willing to bet my chances of being pulled over for the same infraction are dramatically lower.
Frenk
Player Valuation: £35m
It wasn’t an air freshener, it was for expired tags. They then ran his plate and found there was a warrant out for his arrest, he had skipped bail and hadn’t checked in with his parole officer.
Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of events that need not of happened, leading eventually to this young man losing his life. Seeing that video makes it pretty obvious that it was accidental, and not deliberate. While there is no doubt racial profiling that goes on, we have to be able to decipher when it is and when it isn’t and clearly state so. Calling something murder, which is what some are doing, when it truly isn’t, isn’t going to do the seeking of justice any favors.
This police officer or ex-police officer, now, should be punished accordingly and hopefully will be. She was unbelievably stupid it seems, and I don’t know whether there are any other contributing factors in how this all transpired, it seems like an accident, a terribly sad one at that.
Finally, I have never killed anybody accidentally, or deliberately. I imagine though that it must be an horrific thing to live with. Obviously, that does not make this young mans family feel any better though, and I imagine they are feeling a loss that is unimaginable right now. Hopefully something can be learned from all this.
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