The Dude

All of these police shootings in the past few years have had one common denominator. In each one of these cases the individual was resisting arrest. No I am not saying if someone resists arrest they should be shot, but had they cooperated they would likely all be alive today. The police may be wrong in some cases no doubt, and maybe they are abusing their authority or pulled some of these guys over for the wrong reasons, but it is better to be alive than to try and prove a point by resisting arrest and dead. If you think an officer is over stepping his authority, fine, get a lawyer and fight it through the system. At least you will be alive. If an officer gives you a command, do it. Worry about telling your side of the story later.

"Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared."

SaintFanInATLHELL

It's not as black and white as that. Let's take four recent cases:

Sterling in Baton Rouge
Castile in Minnesota
Tamir Rice in Cleveland
Walter Scott in South Carolina

In two of those cases (Castile and Rice) there is no indication that there was resisting arrest. With Castile at worst he was trying to comply with potentially conflicting orders of "Show me your id" and from the officer's voice on the video something along the lines of "I told him to keep his hands out of his pockets."

Scott was fleeing the scene. So while I guess failure to follow an officer's command is technically resisting arrest, it's clear from the video that Scott was absolutely no threat to that officer.

So only in the case of Sterling was there an active physical confrontation in terms of resisting arrest.

Unfortunately, I do not believe that can always be the case, which is the heart of the problem. What I've learned from watching these is often the officers come into the encounter with a predisposition that something is going to go down. Let's look at each of these four cases as examples:

Sterling: Incident started with a 911 call that Sterling threatened someone with a gun. So we can presume that's information the officers had when they walked up to him.

Castile: Call over the radio was that he fit the description of a robber. In addition Castile volunteered the information that he was concealed carry). I read that in Minnesota reporting that information in voluntary.

Rice: 911 call of some "guy" waving a gun. The additional information that it probabl was a toy I do not believe was relayed to the officer.

Scott: an ID check showed Scott had a bench warrant for missed child support payments.

Finally as an added bonus throw in Mark Hughes who was the guy in Dallas open carrying a rifle at the protest. Once the shooting started, he was named as either a "suspect" or "person of interest" depending on the outlet. They guy was smart and immediately handed over his weapon to police.

So the common denominator that I see is much more of a police perception of a armed and dangerous black man seen as a threat. And unfortunately being black is a critical part of the equation. If you have a moment do a search on "best open carry stop ever" and check out the videos. Generally starts with the same trigger of a 911 call that someone is carrying a gun. A police stop. But honestly with white citizens in an open carry situation, the response in completely 180 degrees than some of the ones I've outlined above.

As a black man, I know that I can do everything right and still end up in a world of hurt. I also know that it hasn't happened and will most likely not happen because the vast majority of officers out there do their job right.

But we all need to work on ways to curtail these events going badly. And there should be some accountability when in fact a bad situation could have been handled without loss of life.

SFIAH

Super Bowl Championships: New Orleans Saints:1, Carolina:0, Atlanta Chokers: STILL ZERO

Only Atlanta choked in an unchokable situation... Life is definitely good.