is the title of this Eugene Robinson column in Friday's Washington Post.
It is well worth the read, as the title should make clear.
Allow me to jump ahead to the words that make the title relevant, and which occur a good way through the column, offered without the hypertext links in the original (which you should read):
What started the whole thing? Slager pulled Scott over because he had a broken taillight on his aging Mercedes.
Michael Brown was walking in the middle of the street. Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes. For three black men, these misdemeanors became capital offenses.
The one witness reports there was a scuffle, and it is possible Scott was not submissive enough in his words and body language, although as Robinson notes that
given subsequent events — eight shots fired at Scott’s back — I have to doubt that Slager initiated the encounter with an Officer Friendly approach.
Please keep reading.
I want to stop for a moment and focus on the 8 shots fired. I will want to see the autopsy report, but the video does not seem to show any impact upon Scott until the 8th bullet. Again, as we saw in the case of the shooting of Michael Brown, on top of everything else the officer in question does not seem to be very accurate in his use of his firearm, which were anyone else around would represent a real threat to their safety. There is also clear evidence from behavior not only of the officer now charged with murder but with the other officer (partner) who arrived and said nothing when the shooter in violation of procedure left the body, went back to where he had been, picked something up and came back and dropped it. And despite the communications to dispatch, neither officer made any attempt at performing CPR on Scott. It seems to me that the other officer should also be at a minimum be facing departmental charges.
Returning to Robinson's column, he writes
The fact is that not everyone who is ever stopped by a police officer is going to be happy about the experience. Yet black men run a tragically greater risk than others of having the encounter turn deadly.
Which is why time and again we have heard from prominent Black Americans about how they teach their children, and similarly in the case of one prominent white in an interracial marriage, Mayor De Blasio of NYC. It is a reality, because those who wear blue tend to see more danger in men of color even if that color is the same as that of their own skin. It is in part the "cop culture" as well as the "Blue Wall of Silence" that is at play in incidents like this.
Robinson's penultimate paragraph is used as a means of setting up his conclusion. He writes
But it doesn’t take data analysis to realize that when police treat communities like occupied territory — and routinely automatically classify black men as suspects — the opportunity for tragedy grows exponentially.
Maybe the larger society is finally beginning to recognize what those in the Black community have known for far too long.
And then there is what follows inevitably, as Robinson notes in his conclusion:
Walter Scott’s broken taillight was an excuse, not an offense. Slager knew that Scott had to be guilty of something. It was just a matter of finding out what that black man’s crime might be.
Several centuries ago the man running France, Cardinal Richelieu, offered the following insight:
Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him.
When I was in the Marines, one of my drill instructors informed me that the average jarhead f*&$ed up at least half a dozen times a day, so that if someone really want to make an example of them, it was not hard to find something on which to bring him up on charges.
Not sure I agreed with the DI. Certainly we have seen how a government that really wants to "get" someone has ways of doing so, even if it is only through selective prosecution as a means of silencing dissenters. We have unfortunately seen that in our own government, and even in this administration in the use of the obsolete and dangerous Espionage Statute to go after whistle blowers.
Yet most of us do not deal with these kinds of issue.
Our most likely encounter with authority will be local law enforcement, aka the Police. If a substantial portion of a community feels under siege by the local police, then the community cooperation necessary for successful and non-violent policing is not present, and the likelihood of escalation in the use of force increases dramatically.
Having police view the communities in which they work as hostile territory exacerbates the already difficult job of policing. It is the kind of mindset that once labeled a precinct in the South Bronx in NYC as "Fort Apache" as if the police were surrounded by hostiles. Go into a community with that attitude and the people in the community may well give back what you are giving them - hostility.
Only the police are armed, even if not always trained properly in when and how to use their firearms.
Let me return to Robinson. Let me end by simply repeating words that reflect the attitude of many of color when it comes to their experience of police:
Walter Scott’s broken taillight was an excuse, not an offense. Slager knew that Scott had to be guilty of something. It was just a matter of finding out what that black man’s crime might be.