People are Onions.

[ignoramus]

I would like to explore how people subconsciously "profile" other people and come to the conclusions they do.

EG: with respect to the last shootings, did the police officer decide the person was an imminent threat to which he had to take lethal action?

What if the same black man was in a new BMW? Or wearing a suit? Or spoke eloquently? (and innocently still went for his license in his glove box when asked).
Would he still have been shot? Was this black man also a muslim? A potential Terrorist maybe? Did the police officer assess this?

So the officer quickly decided upon profiling the situation in all aspects (demographically, economically, racially, religiously) and decided that the "8 ball" said that if anybody is going to be a risk to your life, it is this man, right here, right now, or someone in his similar position.

Is this ultimately how they teach the police to assess a situation? By number crunching the odds?
What they can never teach you is that life is made up of so many layers, that you cannot easily and accurately determine the mental motives of a person at that moment by profiling them (statistical probability).

We all do it. We all subconsciously profile. But we don't kill people based on our conclusions.
If that police officer was not a psychopath, but genuinely believed that his life was in serious risk, then something has failed him.
Either his training, or the govt, or his job (overwork, underpaid, stressed, low morale, etc)

Thoughts? Can anything be done better at a systemic level? Or do you feel what happened was a byproduct of social tensions of the day?

[Homeless Nutter]

[...]We all do it. We all subconsciously profile. But we don't kill people based on our conclusions.
If that police officer was not a psychopath, but genuinely believed that his life was in serious risk, then something has failed him.
Either his training, or the govt, or his job (overwork, underpaid, stressed, low morale, etc)[...]

I imagine, that if I was responsible for upholding the law in a country where pretty much everyone I ever approached might have a gun and therefore might potentially be able to kill me in a blink of an eye - I'd be on the edge and quick on the trigger too. Not saying that's the only reason - but it can't be denied, that it plays a part.

[ignoramus]

Very true! Therefore your govt (and all previous govts) has failed in its attempt to make America great by not letting its citizens (who voted in the govts) to feel safe on their own streets.

(Likewise, What's the point of arming "innocent (until proven otherwise)" citizens with guns to protect themselves against potential psycho cops if they're just gonna end up dead?)

[Mr.wizard]

I think it has to do with a lot factors stemming from racial profiling and economic status. I doubt in the last shooting that the officer pulled that car over for a broken tail light and said "if the driver is black I'm shooting him." The problem is you have a deadly weapons in the hands of people in extremely tense situations. White cop feels like he has a target on his back because he's dealing with a black person and Black person feels like he has a target on his back when dealing with a white cop, throw in a gun or two and viola.

[robvalue]

It's a good point. Ideally, we'd like to take as much time as possible to assess situations, to come up with the best and fairest action.

But if someone's life is in danger, we simply don't have that luxury. Not acting becomes an action in itself. I think for people who are reasonably likely to be in such situations as part of their job, they should be given training on being able to make level headed, timely decisions. I expect they probably are already. Whether it's sufficient, I don't know. Removing all of our own biases is almost certainly impossible, we can just do our best to balance things.

If "being black" is considered a factor, then that is obviously a big problem for anyone who thinks that way, who has to make split-second decisions.

[johan]

(Likewise, What's the point of arming "innocent (until proven otherwise)" citizens with guns to protect themselves against potential psycho cops if they're just gonna end up dead?)

I think your understanding of why people in this country choose to arm themselves is a bit lacking.

[account_inactive]

No, you're an onion!

[paulpablo]

I would like to explore how people subconsciously "profile" other people and come to the conclusions they do.

EG: with respect to the last shootings, did the police officer decide the person was an imminent threat to which he had to take lethal action?

What if the same black man was in a new BMW? Or wearing a suit? Or spoke eloquently? (and innocently still went for his license in his glove box when asked).
Would he still have been shot? Was this black man also a muslim? A potential Terrorist maybe?  Did the police officer assess this?

So the officer quickly decided upon profiling the situation in all aspects (demographically, economically, racially, religiously) and decided that the "8 ball" said that if anybody is going to be a risk to your life, it is this man, right here, right now, or someone in his similar position.

Is this ultimately how they teach the police to assess a situation? By number crunching the odds?
What they can never teach you is that life is made up of so many layers, that you cannot easily and accurately determine the mental motives of a person at that moment by profiling them (statistical probability).

We all do it. We all subconsciously profile. But we don't kill people based on our conclusions.
If that police officer was not a psychopath, but genuinely believed that his life was in serious risk, then something has failed him.
Either his training, or the govt, or his job (overwork, underpaid, stressed, low morale, etc)

Thoughts? Can anything be done better at a systemic level? Or do you feel what happened was a byproduct of social tensions of the day?

From what the officer is saying is that he told the man to not reach for anything.  Philando's girlfriend is saying the officer told Philando to get his license out of his pocket then shot him when he went into his pocket.

In either situation, it being the police officer giving faulty commands, or Philando not following the commands, it doesn't seem like it was an assessment.  It seems like it was a spontaneous reaction to Philando reaching for something that the officer either thought he told him not to reach for or he had told him not to reach for. 

There's something going around on websites about Philando vaguely matching the description of an armed robbery suspect who was a black male of a similar age who also had a handgun.  I don't know how true that is.

From the video you can't tell if the officer approached the car with his gun drawn or if he drew it once he knew the man was armed or what happened at all before the shooting.

Sometimes I make a guess about what I think has happened but in this situation I wouldn't even like to guess.

[Whateverist]

This is a whole other layer to you, Iggy. The mind is as much sack of chemistry as it is a computer. Hormones will have their say. So how do you screen out of the police force the ones prone to shoot black people for fitting their inner profile of dangerous?

[Minimalist]

White cop feels like he has a target on his back

Except the cop in Minnesota was not "white."  He was Hispanic. 

The issue here is not black v white.  The issue is black v blue.