I don’t know if you’ve heard the story about the shooting of an Australian woman in Minneapolis. It hasn’t received enormous coverage here but it’s front page news in Australia. I want to commend to your attention Mike McDaniel’s remarks about the incident which strike me as informed, reasonable comment. Here’s his summation:
Again, gentle readers, let me stress my limitations in analyzing this case. I know only what media sources are telling me, but experience helps to fill in the blanks. The initial encounter between Damond and the officers, particularly the time frame, is very odd, and certainly will be one of the focuses of any competent investigation.
Most important in this case will be the testimony of the two officers, and particularly that of Officer Harrity. Pity him. He’s caught in the middle of a racial narrative, with negative consequences for lies and the truth. I suspect his testimony will be that he was talking to Damond, and suddenly, his ears were ringing and she was falling. If so, this will likely be the truth. He may have seen nothing at all threatening, which does not mean Noor could not have seen something. It would not be surprising to discover he suffered hearing damage, and some injuries to his face and eyes. It will be interesting to hear what Noor might have said to him, and done, post-shooting. While information is, as yet, inconclusive, it appears Noor fired a single shot.
Read the whole thing.
I’ve mentioned before the many strategies that news media use to cultivate public opinion, repeat not merely reporting the news but grooming public reaction to the news. This story has just about all of them including what the media report, how they report it, and what they don’t report.
Perhaps Damond’s pajama top featured a cartoon of a cop-killing and Noor felt threatened by the dye pattern.
A woman not in street clothes, with a non-American accent, in a dark setting so her light hair and fair skin didn’t stand out …. you can’t be too careful dealing with those Ay-rabs!
Seems obvious to me.
If we’re not asking why police in the U.S. killed upward of a thousand people last year when other ethnically diverse countries find it unusual to see a hundredth of that number, then we really are in serious trouble.
And no, I don’t consider it a problem of guns. There’s an illness in our culture that we refuse to understand. It crosses racial lines and is systemic; somehow America makes murderers of us.
I agree that there’s a problem. The police have irrational fears. They also have rational fears. Why are our police armed? Because without the arms they would be placed at too great a risk.
If urban black men between the ages of 15 and 35 were only killing (mostly each other) at the rate that rural black men between the age of 15 and 35 were, our homicide rate would still be high but it would be much closer to that of European countries than it is now. That’s the problem that calls out for attention.
Right now there are a lot of people who are pretending that the homicide rate in the U. S. can be lowered without talking about race or social dysfunction.