“Everyone is biased, but an officer is equipped with a weapon that can turn bias into death,” Lisa Thurau told The Huffington Post. Thurau is an attorney who works for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Strategies for Youth, an organization that trains police nationwide in how to interact with young people, particularly dealing with communities of color.
On Saturday, August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot to death by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was 18 years old and was unarmed, according to USA Today. That night Wilson had received a call about a robbery at a convenience store, and that the suspect described was walking toward another convenience store. Ten minutes after receiving that call, Wilson came across Brown and his friend walking down the street. He confronted them, which ended fatally for Brown. Wilson told sources that Brown physically assaulted him and also tried grabbing his weapon, according to USA Today. In response, Wilson fired six shots at Brown, four of which made contact with his arm and the other two with his head, according to USA Today. Following the day of Brown’s death, his parents hired attorney Benjamin Crump to represent their son in court; Crump also represented Trayvon Martin’s family.
This event has caused major disturbance in the town of Ferguson, the main source being violent protests in support of Wilson and Brown. When events like this occur, the issue of racism is brought up every time, and the violent actions of the officer are questioned.
Situations such as the Trayvon Martin and the Brown cases make it hard to say who was in the right and who was in the wrong, especially since I was not there along with many other people. All we have to go on are witness testimonies. I urge people to keep an open mind with issues like this instead of jumping to assumptions as disturbing as racism. However, the fact that Brown was unarmed and was fired at six times does raise questions in my mind. I understand that Wilson said he was physically assaulted by Brown and that he reached for his weapon, and that may warrant one shot or two, but definitely not six.
This issue stems from the way black males are perceived by some members of the police force. Some law enforcement officers may feel threatened during interactions with black males.“What some of the research has shown is that black skin color — and you also think about other types of physical characteristics associated with blacks — tend to be more closely associated with negative concepts so it would be more closely associated with fear, more closely associated with negative personality traits,” said Thurau, according to The Huffington Post.
Unfortunately there are people who still see people of color in a different light and that is not fair, but what is also not fair is accusing Wilson of killing Brown just because Brown was not white. What about the white men who face unnecessary brutality from the police? We hardly ever hear about those cases in the news, and in fact, they are more common. If we are going to focus on this issue of questionable brutality by the police force, then it should be focused on as a whole.
From 1999 to 2011, 2,151 white people in police shootings compared to 1,130 black people, according to poynter.org. However, it is important to also note that there is a much higher population of white men than black men making the probability of white men being killed in a confrontation with a police officer much higher. “More whites are killed by the police than blacks primarily because whites outnumber blacks in the general population by more than five to one,” said Brian Forst, a professor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University, according to poynter.org.
The leading cause of death for black men is murder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Forty percent of black men between the ages of 15 and 34 who died in 2011 were murdered compared to 3.8 percent of white males who died. Experts came to the conclusion that this had to do with poverty and geography, according to The Huffington Post. The differing social structures, lack of access to jobs and educational opportunities, and many other factors between impoverished black neighborhoods and others is often a matter of life and death, said Eli Silverman, a professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
If anything, in some cases police help prevent the deaths of black men rather than increasing them. A focus on improving poverty-stricken areas would most likely help decrease those numbers as well.
Criminologist James Allen Fox of Northeastern University said that there has been a 39 percent increase in black men being killed by police since 2000, but he also said that there has been a 55 percent increase in the number of whites being killed by police, according to The Huffington Post.
If we would only open our eyes, we would see that this was a widespread problem among all races But too often incidents such as Brown and Wilson get blown out of proportion by the media, and the issue of race comes into the spotlight. It is unfortunate that a young man had to die no matter the color of his skin, and the actions of Wilson can be brought into question seeing that Brown was unarmed and six shots were fired. But we as civilians are not in any place to make accusations concerning something we know nothing about; that is something for the courts to decide.
The police reserve the right to use deadly force when they feel it is necessary, and Wilson might have thought six shots were necessary. For all we know Wilson felt his life was threatened by Brown and did what he had to do regardless of the color of his skin.
Caitlin Malone can be reached at caitlin.malone@spartans.ut.edu