I think part of the problem is that it’s not just about the cops. I have to wonder how much of this is on the cops themselves, and how much of it is on the people who called the police in the first place. In the white guy’s case, it looks like the cop is just approaching him on his own because he noticed him carrying a rifle. In the black guy’s case. it seems like the police are responding to a call. That’s a disparity that goes beyond just the cops, because it implies that someone called the cops in the first place in that instance.
One of my college roommates was a black guy that grew up upper-middle class, living in the kind of gated communities where couples with no kids still live in 5000-sqft houses because why not. I remember him telling me how they still had encounters with the police in their own neighborhood several times a year while doing mundane things like walking the dog or sitting in their car in the driveway. They never had problems with the cops themselves, they were always professional, just there because “they got a call.” Which again implies that someone saw a black person in a rich neighborhood and figured that warranted police attention.
And then of course there’s what happened to John Crawford III. While the police aren’t really blameless in what happened, the fact that they thought they were responding to an active shooter kind of colors the situation. The guy who made a panicky 911 call over a guy holding an airsoft gun in the toy section really created that situation.
Police departments have their problems, but it goes beyond just that. The entire country just has totally screwed up risk-perception. Everyone worries about dying in a terrorist attack or a mass shooting or just some random violent crime. And this already screwed up perception is further skewed by things like racial stereotypes. Imagine someone driving a car, a big top-heavy SUV prone to roll overs. They’ve got a 64oz jug of Mountain Dew in the cup holder, they’ve got the window cracked open while they smoke a cigarette. They’re also texting while driving, as they approach an intersection. The light has gone yellow, about to turn red. There’s a couple of black guys standing on the corner. What are the biggest threats to this person’s safety? Most immediately, the big unwieldy automobile they’re driving unsafely. After that, their most likely causes of death are heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and lung cancer. Some where way, way down the list is the remote possibility that the two guys at the corner are going to carjack them and kill them in the process. And yet, plenty of people would have this at the top of the list. It’s absurd. Not just absurd, but insulting… because a driver approaching some pedestrians while texting is a far far bigger threat to the pedestrians than they are to the driver. Of course, the hundreds that die every day of heart attacks, stokes, diabetes, cancer, and car accidents don’t make the nightly news. The one guy who gets murdered during a car jacking does though. And so that’s what everyone sees.
