In a
special video presentation on CNN in which police aim to tell "their side of the story," it only takes a few minutes to realize that they have absolutely zero intentions on telling us anything we don't already know.
Aimed at journalists, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund has created a simulation center in which journalists get a chance to experience what life for a police officer can sometimes be like on their very worst day.
On a screen projected onto the wall in front of me, I watch a madman go on a workplace shooting rampage. Bodies line the floor. I'm the only officer on the scene. If I don't act fast, more will die. Everything is moving so quickly that it's almost impossible to tell between shooters and victims. I eventually take down the intruder, but obviously not soon enough.
The problem, though, is that while police may indeed face a workplace shooting rampage once in their lifetime, that doesn't even come close to explaining why they choked an unarmed Eric Garner to death or shot unarmed men like Amadou Diallo 41 times or
Alfonso Limon 16 times.
By in large, what the nation is upset about is that police seem to have endless skill and mercy in large scale mass shooting—like when 70 people were shot and 12 were killed in Aurora, Colorado, or when six people were killed and a congresswoman was shot in Tucson, Arizona—in which dangerous murderers were peacefully apprehended. But somehow they can't find a way to avoid killing Tamir Rice or John Crawford, who were legally holding toy guns and posed no harm whatsoever to society.
Time after time, the difference appears to be that violent white criminals just don't frighten officers the same way non-violent black boys and men do.