WOMAN SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE OFFICER IN HER OWN HOME/POLICE VIOLENCE IN THE USA!/ANOTHER INNOCENT VICTIM
A makeshift memorial outside the home of Atatiana Jefferson on Monday. Jefferson was fatally shot by a Fort Worth police officer early Saturday morning. (Jake Bleiberg/AP)
ATATIANA JEFFERSONONE OF THE COUNTLESS VICTIMS OF US POLICE BRUTALITYATATIANA JEFFERSON, REST IN PEACE
Aaron Y. DeanCreditTarrant County Sheriff’s Office
AARON Y DEAN, THE POLICE OFFICER, WHO SHOT AND KILLED ATATIANA JEFFERSON
” Oscar’s killing is personal because his death offends the fundamental principles of justice, every notion of dignity and the idea that through those threads, all of our lives are connected. As human beings, we are responsible for each other. His death means that we must work for his justice. ”
ABOUT OSCAR GRANT, ANOTHER BLACK VICTIM OF US POLICE BRUTALITY
https://www.amnestyusa.org/another-year-another-unarmed-black-man-killed-by-police/
Police violence in the USA [1] is very depressing and not only shows an amount of deep structural racism [most victims are black men and sometimes blach women too], but also the insane trigger happiness of many policemen.As I say, not only black people are being deadly shot, white people too [2]But the problem is that reading the percentage of victims, black people are over representated.According to Amnesty International five times more than white people! [3]And almost in the most cases the same story:Police officers are confronted with black men, who are deadly shot, because the police officer tought they were wearing a gun, while in reality it was something innocent like a mobile phone…………[4]This can happen once, or two times, but when it happens each time again [while the police officer is heavily armed and can easily defend himself] it is no ”incident” anymore, but a form of racism, whether it is conscious or subconscious.It happens too many times!Besides:Investigations show, that there is a disproportionate fear to see criminality in black people, especially tall black men and black men in general [5]There are so many examples of police violence against black people!See under note 6Depressing and good, that movements like”Black lives matter” [7] is protesting continually.
STUDIES ABOUT POLICE BRUTA;ITY AGAINST BLACK PEOPLE
Police brutality against black people is widely acknowledged:Firstly by the facts we see in the news.But the amount of police brutality against black people is shocking in this time, this century, this period:
Amnesty International speaks for black Americans as five times likely to be shot as unarmed whote Americans
I quote Amnesty International USA
”and unarmed black Americans are five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.” [8]
By the way, about USA police trigger happiness:Amnesty International USA also writes:
”Hundreds of people are killed by police every year in the United States.’ [9]
According to the Washington Post, in 2016, 962 people were killed by the police [10], in 2019, 717 people so far [11]
That’s a lot of people.
ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE:
A recent study reveals, that about 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police [12]That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops…..[13]The analysis also showed that Latino men and boys, black women and girls and Native American men, women and children are also killed by police at higher rates than their white peers. But the vulnerability of black males was particularly striking. [14]
THE BLACK WOMAN, WHO WAS SHOT AND KILLED IN HER OWN HOME
The reason I wrote this piece in particular is the following shocking incident:
In the early morning on saturday 12 october 2019 an 28 year old black woman,Atatiana Jefferson, was shot and killed in her own home by a white Fort Worth police officer [in Texas] [15]In her own home.As newssources say:In her own bedroom! [16]Police arrived at her home after a neighbor called a non-emergency number, stating that Jefferson’s front door was open.[2] Police body camera footage showed that when she came to her window to observe police outside her home, Officer Aaron Dean shot through it and killed her. [17]And now the most shocking point:The policeman didn’t identify himself as a policeman [18], just shouted orders and shot immediately, not giving the woman even the chance to respond to his orders.Youtube films give evidence to that.You hear a shouting order, then a shot……[19]WELL, readers, here was no supposed black criminal, no alleged gun, that was pulled, only an unarmed woman in her home, who was shot…….Because I don’t believe the cop’s story, that she had a gun, that she pointed out on the officer, based allegedly on the statement of her nephew, a child of 8 years old! [20]Besides this statement of an 8 years old had been debunked!I quote the New York Times:”A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window. When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.” [21]And even IF she had a gun in her home, what seemed to be the case [22] since when that is a problem?According to the second amendment of the USA constitution [23] any American inhabitant has the right to bear a weapon!Besides, even the police chief, Kraus, had defended her right to have a gun on her home! [24]
Is it not shocking, readers, that a person is not safe in his or her own house?
With right the NAACP [25] gave the following statement:
”UNACCEPTABLE! The acts of yet another “trained” police officer have resulted in the death of #AtatianaJefferson. Gun downed in her own home. If we are not safe to call the police, if we are not safe in our homes, where can we find peace? We demand answers. We demand justice.” [26]
CHARGED WITH MURDER
End now, the good news is, that Aaron Y Deal, the white police officer, who shot Atatiana Jefferson in her own home, is being charged for murder. [27]
I personally wonder whether the cop really is going to be convicted, but if he is, I don’t hope it is such a mockery of justice, like in a similar case, shortly ago, in which a white female police officer shot a black man, Botham Jean, in his own home, pretending [I don’t believe her] that she believed it was her own apartment and that Jean was a burglar [as if it is justified to shoot and kill any burglar, who comes in your home, but that’s apart from this] [28]She was merely convicted to ten years prison. [29]
A mockery of justice, according to me and many others.
But in the Netherlands it is not at all different:
In 2013 a Dutch police officer, who shot the 17 years old Rishi Chadrikasing [from Surinamese-Indian descent], who was running away [the officer wrongly stated that Rishi was a ”treath” to him, despite the fact, that he was running away!], was acquitted for fatlly shooting Chadrikasing.I called the sentence ”license to kill” [30]
EPILOGUE
The police killing of the innocent Atatiana Jefferson, in her own home, shows another day in hell for black people in the USA.Because they are not safe!Black men bear the greatest risks-being seen as dangerous, even when they only show their ID, it mysteriously changes in a gun-but also black women are not safe, even not in their own home.And the fact that a female police officer kills a black man in his own home, telling a nonsense story, that she thought it was her own home and is only convicted to ten years prison [31], just shows how sick the American society still is!
Reason for me to write this piece [see also my comment on ABC News below].And in memory to Atatiana Jefferson and all black and other people, who were victims of police killings.
But we are determined to fight on.Untill Justice is done!
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!
Astrid EssedAmsterdam
MY COMMENT ON ABC NEWS
ABC NEWSTEXAS COP NEVER IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS POLICE BEFORE FATALLY SHOOTING ATATIANA JEFFERSON IN HER OWN HOME: OFFICIAL13 OCTOBER 2019
https://abcnews.go.com/US/officer-bodycam-shooting-killing-woman-home/story?id=66237208
Astrid Essed • a few seconds agoHold on, this is waiting to be approved by ABC News.
HORRIBLE!
Though I don’t know the facts yet, it seems to me like an extrajudicial ezxecution!
Not only clearly the policeman did not identify himself as police, or shouting ”police” [he has to show his card too], even if he did, and it was a situation which required shooting, he still had the obligation to shoot in the air first [if there was no imminent threath and then on a less vulnerable part of her body!
Police violence against black people in the US is shocking.
Mostly is the excuse, that the person ”bearec arms” and to see later it was just a mobile or identity card he wanted to show!
But also white people are subject to police violence.
So in general:
Not only racism, but also trigger happy behaviour is the root of many police deaths.
THIS HAS TO BE STOPPED!/RIGHT NOW!/https://www.astridessed.nl/…
Astrid Essed
NOTES
[1]
WIKIPEDIAPOLICE BRUTALITY IN THE UNITED STATES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality_in_the_United_States
BRITANNICA.COMPOLICE BRUTALITY IN THE UNITED STATES
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Police-Brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580
BRITANNICA.COM
AFRICAN AMERICANS AND POLICE BRUTALITY
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Police-Brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580#ref334676
ORIGINAL SOURCE
BRITANNICA.COMPOLICE BRUTALITY IN THE UNITED STATES
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Police-Brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580
[2]
”In the U.S., African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. For black women, the rate is 1.4 times more likely.”
CITYLAB.COMWHAT NEW RESEARCH SAYS ABOUT RACE AND POLICE SHOOTINGS6 AUGUST 2019
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/
[3]
AMNESTY INTERNATIONALDEADLY FORCE AND POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/deadly-force-police-accountability/
”In the U.S., African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. For black women, the rate is 1.4 times more likely.”CITYLAB.COMWHAT NEW RESEARCH SAYS ABOUT RACE AND POLICE SHOOTINGS6 AUGUST 2019
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/
Two new studies have revived the long-running debate over how police respond to white criminal suspects versus African Americans.
In the U.S., African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. For black women, the rate is 1.4 times more likely.
That’s according to a new study conducted by Frank Edwards, of Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice, Hedwig Lee, of Washington University in St. Louis’s Department of Sociology, and Michael Esposito, of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The researchers used verified data on police killings from 2013 to 2018 compiled by the website Fatal Encounters, created by Nevada-based journalist D. Brian Burghart. Under their models, they found that roughly 1-in-1,000 black boys and men will be killed by police in their lifetime. For white boys and men, the rate is 39 out of 100,000.
In fact, people of color in general were found more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.
The study was published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, a journal that recently drew controversy for publishing another study on police killing disparities. That study, led by Michigan State University psychology professor Joseph Cesario, published on July 22, found that violent crime rates and the racial demographics of a given location are better indicators for determining a police killing victim’s race.
As Cesario explained in a press release:
Many people ask whether black or white citizens are more likely to be shot and why. If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black people are more likely to be shot.
The two studies are just the latest salvos in a long-running debate over whether police violence towards African Americans is better explained because of racial prejudice or because black people are really violent enough to justify extra police force. The Cesario study, with its focus on crime rates, seems to fall in the latter camp. Both rely on media-generated police shootings data—Cesario’s uses databases produced by The Washington Post and The Guardian.
Several academics have challenged Cesario’s methodology, namely his decision to “sidestep the benchmark” of using population to calculate racial disparity. It has been questioned whether using population is an appropriate benchmark in these kinds of analyses: Critics of this technique believe that population-benchmarking is flawed because it assumes black and white people have an equal likelihood of encountering police. (An example of population-benchmarking is, as Cesario’s study explains, stating: “26% of civilians killed by police shootings in 2015 were Black even though Black civilians comprise only 12% of the U.S. population. According to this 12% benchmark, more Black civilians are fatally shot than we would expect, indicating disparity.”)
The study was published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, a journal that recently drew controversy for publishing another study on police killing disparities. That study, led by Michigan State University psychology professor Joseph Cesario, published on July 22, found that violent crime rates and the racial demographics of a given location are better indicators for determining a police killing victim’s race.
As Cesario explained in a press release:
Many people ask whether black or white citizens are more likely to be shot and why. If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black people are more likely to be shot.
The two studies are just the latest salvos in a long-running debate over whether police violence towards African Americans is better explained because of racial prejudice or because black people are really violent enough to justify extra police force. The Cesario study, with its focus on crime rates, seems to fall in the latter camp. Both rely on media-generated police shootings data—Cesario’s uses databases produced by The Washington Post and The Guardian.
Several academics have challenged Cesario’s methodology, namely his decision to “sidestep the benchmark” of using population to calculate racial disparity. It has been questioned whether using population is an appropriate benchmark in these kinds of analyses: Critics of this technique believe that population-benchmarking is flawed because it assumes black and white people have an equal likelihood of encountering police. (An example of population-benchmarking is, as Cesario’s study explains, stating: “26% of civilians killed by police shootings in 2015 were Black even though Black civilians comprise only 12% of the U.S. population. According to this 12% benchmark, more Black civilians are fatally shot than we would expect, indicating disparity.”)Instead of using population, Cesario analyzed variables such as the race of the police officers, crime rates, and the racial demographics of locations where police shootings happened in 2015. From that, he derived that black and Latino victims of police killings were more likely to have been shot by black and Latino cops, and that ”might not be due to bias on the part of Black or Hispanic officers, but instead to simple overlap between officer and county demographics.” The problem with this, as Princeton professor Jonathan Mummolo, explained on Twitter, is that it still rests on the assumption that black and white officers encounter black civilians in equal numbers, or in even temperaments—which they don’t.
The problem with this, as Princeton professor Jonathan Mummolo, explained on Twitter, is that it still rests on the assumption that black and white officers encounter black civilians in equal numbers, or in even temperaments—which they don’t.
What do the recent mass shootings tell us, if anything, about this?
There’s also something to be said for what the victims were doing when the cops shot them. Cesario points out that, “The vast majority—between 90 percent and 95 percent—of the civilians shot by officers were actively attacking police or other citizens when they were shot”—and that there were more white civilians who were committing such attacks when police killed them than were African Americans. In fact, white people were more likely to be armed when police killed them, as Cesario’s study acknowledges—“if anything, [we] found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime,” reads the study.
The three most recent mass shootings—in Gilroy, California; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso, Texas—represent extreme examples of armed white men on the attack, but looking at them through the lens of Cesario’s findings is still revealing. Police shot two of the perpetrators, killing one of them. Connor Betts, the shooter who killed nine people and injured 27 more on August 4 in Dayton, was stopped by police bullets less than a minute after his attack began. Police fired at the Gilroy shooter, Santino Legan, but he ultimately succumbed to self-inflicted wounds. Patrick Crusius was arrested “without incident” after killing 22 people and injuring dozens more in El Paso.
In only one of these cases did police actually shoot and kill an armed white suspect who was on the attack: Betts in Dayton. Even that case is murky, though. Betts wore a mask, hearing protection, and body armor—his race was likely not apparent from a distance, and the entire melee happened very quickly. But even if one interprets the fact that police shot at two of those three shooters as evidence of the “anti-White disparity” Cesario mentions, one could also argue that it takes whites committing large-scale acts of terror with automatic weapons for police to respond in the same way that police have responded to, say, a teenager walking away-from-police-while-black.
The limitations of the data
Another way to determine whether racial bias is a factor is by examining police behavior when their target is unarmed and not on the attack. This is what University of Nebraska at Omaha criminology professor Justin Nix examined in his 2017 study on police killings. Nix’s research, which Cesario cites often in his own study, also focuses on police shooting-killings in 2015, when police killed nearly twice as many white people that year (495) than they did black people (258). But 15 percent of the black people police killed that year were unarmed, compared with just 6 percent of white people who were unarmed when killed by police. The study also found that 24 percent of African Americans and 32 percent of other non-white racial groups were not attacking police officers when they were killed, compared to 17 percent of white people. This was interpreted as “preliminary evidence of an implicit bias effect,” against African Americans and people of color.
What do the recent mass shootings tell us, if anything, about this?
There’s also something to be said for what the victims were doing when the cops shot them. Cesario points out that, “The vast majority—between 90 percent and 95 percent—of the civilians shot by officers were actively attacking police or other citizens when they were shot”—and that there were more white civilians who were committing such attacks when police killed them than were African Americans. In fact, white people were more likely to be armed when police killed them, as Cesario’s study acknowledges—“if anything, [we] found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime,” reads the study.
The three most recent mass shootings—in Gilroy, California; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso, Texas—represent extreme examples of armed white men on the attack, but looking at them through the lens of Cesario’s findings is still revealing. Police shot two of the perpetrators, killing one of them. Connor Betts, the shooter who killed nine people and injured 27 more on August 4 in Dayton, was stopped by police bullets less than a minute after his attack began. Police fired at the Gilroy shooter, Santino Legan, but he ultimately succumbed to self-inflicted wounds. Patrick Crusius was arrested “without incident” after killing 22 people and injuring dozens more in El Paso.
In only one of these cases did police actually shoot and kill an armed white suspect who was on the attack: Betts in Dayton. Even that case is murky, though. Betts wore a mask, hearing protection, and body armor—his race was likely not apparent from a distance, and the entire melee happened very quickly. But even if one interprets the fact that police shot at two of those three shooters as evidence of the “anti-White disparity” Cesario mentions, one could also argue that it takes whites committing large-scale acts of terror with automatic weapons for police to respond in the same way that police have responded to, say, a teenager walking away-from-police-while-black.
The limitations of the data
Another way to determine whether racial bias is a factor is by examining police behavior when their target is unarmed and not on the attack. This is what University of Nebraska at Omaha criminology professor Justin Nix examined in his 2017 study on police killings. Nix’s research, which Cesario cites often in his own study, also focuses on police shooting-killings in 2015, when police killed nearly twice as many white people that year (495) than they did black people (258). But 15 percent of the black people police killed that year were unarmed, compared with just 6 percent of white people who were unarmed when killed by police. The study also found that 24 percent of African Americans and 32 percent of other non-white racial groups were not attacking police officers when they were killed, compared to 17 percent of white people. This was interpreted as “preliminary evidence of an implicit bias effect,” against African Americans and people of color.
Nix, however, is cautious about deriving any firm conclusions from his own findings or Cesario’s because the data on police shootings in general is too limited. The FBI finally launched its database on police-involved shootings just this year, which is why researchers rely on databases created by journalists. And even the subset of data that academics have been working with—police shooting fatalities—have their own range of limitations.
Cesario declares in his press release that “violent crime rates are the driving force behind fatal [police] shootings,” but Nix says that is “pretty strong language in light of the limitations,” especially if looking at when police deploy lethal force at the local level.
“I don’t think the conclusions are warranted based on their analysis,” said Nix. “You can’t restrict the data to just fatal shootings. Another problem is that when doing these bird’s-eye views, you lose nuance from city to city. Policing is a local thing and there’s no reason to believe that everything is the same across the board.”
For example, Nix would want numbers not only on how many times a police officer shoots their weapon, but every time they draw their gun. “You need a benchmark that says how often they were in certain circumstances where they could have shot but did not. That gets us closer to the likelihood of racial bias.”
Nix recently updated his analysis on police shootings using fatal and non-fatal shootings from the 47 largest metros from 2010 to 2016, using a dataset produced by VICE. That analysis found wide variation between the cities—in St. Louis, 16.8 percent of police shootings were fatal; in Phoenix, 51.9 percent were; and, in Tampa, all three of its police shootings were fatal.
What the studies don’t tell us
Cesario’s study centers the characteristics of the police officer over the victim, concluding essentially that since black and Hispanic police are as likely or more likely to kill people of color as white officers, that the race of the police officer doesn’t matter. But it’s not clear whether that matters in determining whether police bias exists at all. As Philip Atiba Goff, president and cofounder of the Center for Policing Equity, told NPR, “Racism is not a thing that white people can have and black people can’t. And nobody’s research would suggest that it does.”Looking at individual police characteristics doesn’t tell the public anything about the links between structural racism—both within a police department and throughout society—and police violence. Boston University School of Public Health scholar Michael Siegel found that connection in his study last year, which analyzed data on police killings between 2013 and 2017. States that have higher rates of racial segregation, incarceration, educational attainment, economic disparity, and unemployment also tend to have higher levels of police violence against African Americans, Siegel found. Nor does looking at the racial characteristics of individual police shooters tell the public anything about why American law enforcement as a system finds unarmed nonwhite civilians threatening enough to shoot and kill more often than unarmed whites. They don’t explain why police choked Eric Garner, who had no weapon and posed no threat, or why police shot and killed Philando Castile while he was restrained by a seatbelt in a parked car. Meanwhile, Patrick Crusius committed one of the largest terrorist attacks on Latino Americans in U.S history and was apprehended “without incident” while still at the scene of the crime. The point is not that police should have also killed Crusius, but that Garner and Castille should still be alive.
[4]
”On the video, one of the officers is heard yelling, “Gun, gun, gun”. Police officials initially told local media that Clark was found with a “tool bar” on him, but later clarified that he was only holding a phone.”
THE GUARDIANPROTESTS IN CALIFORNIA AFTER POLICE KILL BLACK MAN CARRYING ONLY HIS PHONE
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/23/stephon-clark-police-shooting-sacramento-protests-california
[5]
”Young Black men are stereotyped as threatening, which can have grave consequences for interactions with police. We show that these threat stereotypes are even greater for tall Black men, who face greater discrimination from police officers and elicit stronger judgments of threat.”
PNAS.ORGFOR BLACK MEN, BEING TALL INCREASES THREAT, STEREOTYPING AND POLICE STOPS13 MARCH 2018
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/11/2711
TEXT
Edited by Jennifer A. Richeson, Yale University, New Haven, CT, and approved January 24, 2018 (received for review August 22, 2017)
Significance
Young Black men are stereotyped as threatening, which can have grave consequences for interactions with police. We show that these threat stereotypes are even greater for tall Black men, who face greater discrimination from police officers and elicit stronger judgments of threat. We challenge the assumption that height is intrinsically good for men. White men may benefit from height, but Black men may not. More broadly, we demonstrate how demographic factors (e.g., race) can influence how people interpret physical traits (e.g., height). This difference in interpretation is a matter not of magnitude but of meaning: The same trait is positive for some groups of people but negative for others.
Abstract
Height seems beneficial for men in terms of salaries and success; however, past research on height examines only White men. For Black men, height may be more costly than beneficial, primarily signaling threat rather than competence. Three studies reveal the downsides of height in Black men. Study 1 analyzes over 1 million New York Police Department stop-and-frisk encounters and finds that tall Black men are especially likely to receive unjustified attention from police. Then, studies 2 and 3 experimentally demonstrate a causal link between perceptions of height and perceptions of threat for Black men, particularly for perceivers who endorse stereotypes that Black people are more threatening than White people. Together, these data reveal that height is sometimes a liability for Black men, particularly in contexts in which threat is salient.
“When you deal with the police, you must be careful. You are big and they will automatically see you as a threat.” — Charles Coleman, Jr. (6′4″ Black attorney/writer), quoting his mother
Charles Coleman, Jr. evoked his mother’s warning when he wrote about Eric Garner, an unarmed man choked to death by police. Garner was both Black and 6′3″ tall. Coleman highlights the perils of “occupying a Black body that is inherently threatening,” arguing that tall Black men receive disproportionate attention from police officers (1). This argument evokes the “black brute” archetype, which portrays Black men as apelike savages who use their imposing physical frame to threaten others (2, 3). Although Black men face stereotypes of aggression and threat (4⇓–6), tall Black men may find themselves perceived as especially threatening.
The idea that height has negative consequences contrasts with previous psychological research on height in men, which argues that taller is better. Research finds that tall men seem healthier, more intelligent, more successful, and more physically attractive (7⇓–9). Tall men also stand a greater chance of being hired (10), making more money (11, 12), gaining promotions (13, 14), and winning leadership positions (7, 15).
However, this research almost exclusively explores perceptions of White men (Table S1), who are already positively stereotyped as competent and intelligent (16, 17). On the other hand, Black men are negatively stereotyped; they are seen as hostile, aggressive, and threatening (e.g., refs. 17⇓⇓–20) and are associated with guns (4, 5). For Black men, height may be more often interpreted as a sign of threat instead of competence.
Thus, being tall may not be inherently good or bad for men. Instead, the accessibility of other traits, such as competence and threat, may influence how people interpret height. Classic work in social psychology demonstrates similar effects: Whether a target is initially described as “warm” or “cold” changes how people interpret the target’s other traits (e.g., intelligent, industrious) (21). Considerable research demonstrates that Black men are specifically stereotyped as physically threatening and imposing (22, 23). For this reason, height may impact judgments of threat more strongly for Black men than for White men.
The Present Research
In three studies, we test whether taller Black men are judged as more threatening than shorter Black men and than both taller and shorter White men. We first examined whether New York City police officers disproportionately stopped and frisked tall Black men from 2006 to 2013 (study 1). We then investigated whether height increases threat judgments more for Black men than for White men by manipulating height both visually (study 2) and descriptively (study 3).
Cultural Stereotypes Pilot
Before conducting these three studies, we first conducted a pilot examining participants’ knowledge of cultural stereotypes, testing whether participants endorse knowledge of stereotypes that tall Black men are seen as especially threatening and tall White men are seen as especially competent. Results showed that cultural stereotypes of threat are increased by tallness more for Black targets than for White targets and, conversely, that cultural stereotypes of competence are increased by tallness more for White targets than for Black targets. Full reporting for this pilot is provided in Pilot Study: Cultural Stereotypes About Height and Race; a graph summarizing the results is shown in Fig. S1.
Results
Study 1: New York Police Department Stop-and-Frisk.
In 2013, Judge Shira Scheindlin of the Federal District Court in New York ruled that the New York Police Department’s (NYPD’s) stop-and-frisk program was unconstitutional because of its clear history of racial discrimination (24). Black and Hispanic people faced disproportionate odds of being stopped by police officers, despite the fact that this “racial profiling” was ineffective. In study 1 we tested whether tall Black men were especially likely to be stopped by NYPD officers.
Before analysis, we cleaned the dataset and made three restrictions. (i) We only used data for non-Hispanic Black and White males, avoiding issues with different distributions of height in the population (i.e., Hispanics are shorter than non-Hispanics; women are shorter than men). (ii) We restricted our data to include only people between 5′4″ and 6′4″. This range in height includes over 98% of Black and White males and prevents outliers (particularly those created by clerical errors) from influencing our results. (iii) We restricted our data to include only people of weights between 100 and 400 lb to prevent outliers created by clerical errors.
Recent work demonstrates that young Black men are perceived as taller and more threatening than young White men, controlling for actual height (22). To account for the alternate explanation that police officers simply perceived Black men as taller than White men (25), we analyzed only cases in which suspects provided photographic identification, which almost always lists height alongside other information that cannot be guessed or estimated, such as date of birth (thus making it highly probable that officers record the listed value for height, rather than estimating it) (26). These restrictions left us with 1,073,536 valid targets for analysis.
The stop-and-frisk dataset is large and includes numerous potential dependent variables. For our analysis, we focus on police officers’ decisions to stop individuals, as this decision is made before any interactions with police, making it more reliant on person perception (27). We recognize the potential issue of flexible analyses and partly address this issue by estimating standardized effect sizes for many variables, which allows comparison of the relative magnitude of effects (especially given that the sample size is large enough to allow accurate estimation of effect size).
We accounted for target weight and the interaction of height and weight to isolate height as a predictor (12). Furthermore, to address an ecological explanation for race effects (28), we nested our data within precinct (to account for variability in geographical factors such as crime rate and land value), included precinct-level felony rates (from 2005–2013), and also included a variable in which officers report whether the stop was made in a high-crime area. Finally, because some research suggests that only young Black men are stereotyped as threatening (29), we include age and the interaction between height and age in our model.
Ratio of Black to White stops.
Under stop-and-frisk rules, police officers had the authority to stop anyone they deemed suspicious or threatening. If tall Black men seem especially threatening, then the ratio of Black to White stops (i.e., how many Black men are stopped per White man) should increase with height.
Accounting for precinct-level felonies, weight, age, and perceived local crime, height still showed a meaningful main effect, B = 0.079, t(1,073,526) = 23.98, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.070, 0.085]. At 5′4″, police stopped 4.5 Black men for every White man; at 5′10″, police stopped 5.3 Black men for every White man; and at 6′4″, police stopped 6.2 Black men for every White man. These results suggest that taller Black men face a greater risk of being stopped than shorter Black men.
Notably, the ratio of Black to White stops was also greater for heavier men, B = 0.041, t(1,073,526) = 11.80, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.035, 0.048]. At 115 lb, police stopped 4.5 Black men for every White man; at 175 lb (the average weight in the dataset), police stopped 5.2 Black men for every White man; and at 235 lb, police stopped 5.7 Black men for every White man. Finally, height and weight interacted, B = 0.047, t(1,073,526) = 15.71, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.041, 0.053], such that each 1-SD increase in weight increases the standardized effect of height by 0.047. Because weight estimates were not provided on photograph IDs (hereafter, “photo IDs”), we interpret these results with caution.
We also found effects for other variables in the model. Unsurprisingly, areas with more crime, as reported by police and captured in precinct-level data, exhibit higher ratios of Black to White stops. The ratio of Black to White stops was also larger for younger men. Interestingly, height and age interacted, such that height’s effect on the ratio of Black to White stops was larger for older Black men. See Table S2 for the full coefficients and a replication of results with both photo and verbal IDs included.
Discussion.
Study 1 demonstrates that tall Black men receive disproportionate attention from police officers. During 8 y of NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program, tall Black men were particularly likely to face unjustified stops by police officers, and these patterns were not explained by biased height estimates (since officers received photo IDs).
In the next two studies, we test whether these results might be explained by an interaction between race and height, such that tallness primarily increases perceptions of threat for Black men and primarily increases perceptions of competence for White men.
Study 2: Manipulating Height with Perspective.
We experimentally manipulated height and race to test whether they interact to influence judgments of threat and competence. To manipulate height, we took photographs of 16 young men—eight Black and eight White—from two perspectives: above the target and below the target. These different perspectives naturalistically manipulated the experience of encountering someone who is tall or short. A manipulation check indicated that perspective significantly influenced participants’ free response estimates of target height, b = 1.78, F(1, 427) = 16.42, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.91, 2.65], such that targets that were looking down were perceived as taller [mean (M) = 71.6 in.] than targets that were looking up (M = 69.8 in.). See Method for a more detailed description of the perspective manipulation.
Participants rated 16 photographs for adjectives describing both threat and competence. Then, because we expected judgments to depend on participants’ individual beliefs about Black and White people, we assessed participants’ beliefs that Black people are more threatening than White people. We predicted that stronger beliefs about Black threat (BaBT) would increase participants’ tendency to identify tall Black men as especially threatening. We also tested the complementary hypothesis that stronger BaBT might make tall White men seem especially competent. We preregistered these predictions at https://aspredicted.org/465w9.pdf. We also previously conducted another study with a nearly identical design; the results of this study are detailed in Previous Iteration of Study 2.
Race, height, and racial stereotypes.
To test whether those with higher BaBT would judge tall Black men as especially threatening, we fit a three-way multilevel model predicting threat with race, height, and BaBT. This analysis yielded an expected two-way interaction between target race and BaBT, b = 0.19, F(1, 437) = 61.40, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.14, 0.23], such that those higher in BaBT rated Black men as more threatening relative to White men. Importantly, this analysis also yielded the key three-way interaction, b = 0.15, F(1, 2,081) = 10.97, P = 0.001, 95% CI [0.06, 0.24]. No moderating effect of participant gender emerged (Fig. 1).
For Black targets, the two-way interaction between height and BaBT was significant, b = 0.12, t(833) = 3.67, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.06, 0.19]: Those higher in BaBT saw tall black men as especially threatening. For White targets, this two-way interaction was not significant, b = −0.03, t(834) = −0.83, P = 0.41, 95% CI [−0.09, 0.04]. These results suggest that the predictive utility of BaBT is moderated by height for stereotype-relevant targets (Black men) but not for stereotype-irrelevant targets (White men). See Additional Analyses for Study 2 for BaBT main effects by race and height.
Although BaBT captures the endorsement of stereotypes about threat and not competence, we nevertheless tested for a three-way interaction with competence ratings. We found an expected two-way interaction between target race and BaBT, b = 0.16, F(1, 459) = 70.27, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.11, 0.20], such that those higher in BaBT rated White men as more competent relative to Black men. We also found a three-way interaction, b = 0.12, F(1, 1,097) = 7.52, P = 0.006, 95% CI [0.03, 0.20], such that BaBT predicted competence especially strongly for tall White men. Participant gender did not moderate effects. This interaction is further broken down statistically (Additional Analyses for Study 2) and graphically (Fig. S2).
Suppressed height effects.
Height did not increase threat for White men, nor did it increase competence for Black men. However, our pilot study revealed main effects of height on stereotypes of both competence and threat. One possible explanation for this null finding is that, for judgments of tall White men, perceived competence suppressed gains in threat, and, for judgments of tall Black men, perceived threat suppressed gains in competence. Because we found significant race by height interactions for both threat and competence at mean levels of BaBT, we were able to conduct Sobel mediations using the entire sample to test these hypotheses.
For White targets, we found a negative indirect effect of height on threat, ab = −0.04, z = −4.30, P < 0.001; being taller makes targets seem more competent and thus less threatening. Once this indirect effect was accounted for, height no longer decreased threat for White men, b = −0.05, t(1,406) = −1.40, P = 0.16. Conversely, for Black targets, we found a negative indirect effect of height on competence, ab = −0.09, z = −6.07, P < 0.001; being taller makes targets more threatening and thus less competent. Notably, once this indirect effect was accounted for, height increased perceived competence for Black targets, b = 0.09, t(1,406) = 2.75, P = 0.006, suggesting that height may be beneficial for Black men in contexts that sufficiently nullify concerns about threat (e.g., the corporate boardroom).
Discussion.
Study 2 experimentally demonstrates that height amplifies threat for Black men and competence for White men, particularly for perceivers who endorse beliefs that Black people are more threatening than White people. Study 2 also found indirect negative effects of height on competence for Black men and threat for White men.
Study 3: Manipulating Height with Descriptions.
Although the photographs from study 2 have naturalistic validity, they may also confound height with intimidation (30). We address this concern by manipulating height with text vignettes (e.g., “As you approach each other, you can see that he is very short/quite tall”) and manipulating race with standardized photographs. See Textual Descriptions of Height Used in Study 3 for text descriptions of height.
Participants rated 16 targets on the same threat and competence adjectives used in study 2. They then completed the BaBT scale. As in the previous experiment, we predicted that those higher in BaBT would make especially strong threat judgments for tall Black men and especially strong competence judgments for tall White men. We preregistered these predictions at https://aspredicted.org/sp3aj.pdf.
Race, height, and racial stereotypes.
We again fit a multilevel model predicting threat with race, height, and BaBT. We replicated the key findings of study 2; those higher in BaBT rated Black men as more threatening relative to White men, b = 0.15, F(1, 374) = 30.83, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.10, 0.20], and this effect was especially large for tall Black men, b = 0.16, F(1, 1,548) = 9.04, P = 0.003, 95% CI [0.06, 0.27]. Participant gender did not moderate effects (Fig. 2).
We also replicated the competence results of study 2: Those higher in BaBT rated White men as more competent relative to Black men, b = 0.11, F(1, 320) = 20.36, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.05, 0.17], and this effect was especially large for tall White men, b = 0.10, F(1, 1,518) = 3.78, P = 0.052, 95% CI [−0.00, 0.20]. No moderating effect of participant gender emerged. See Additional Analyses for Study 3 for the breakdown of both the threat and competence interactions.
Discussion.
Study 3 addressed stimuli concerns from study 2 and again demonstrated that, for those higher in BaBT, tall Black men seem especially threatening compared with short Black men and both short and tall White men.
General Discussion
In three studies, we showed that taller is not always better; although tall White men may benefit from increased perceptions of competence, tall Black men are burdened with increased perceptions of threat. We first revealed that NYPD police officers stopped tall Black men at a disproportionately high rate (study 1). We then demonstrated that, for perceivers who endorse stereotypes that Black people are more threatening than White people, tall Black men seem especially threatening (studies 2 and 3).
Previous research has amply demonstrated that people may interpret traits and behaviors as positive or negative depending on the accessibility of other concepts. For example, a classic study revealed that a target’s ambiguous actions are negatively evaluated when participants are first primed with hostility-related traits (versus kindness-related traits) (31). Racial stereotypes alter the accessibility of traits during person perception, which influences how people interpret other traits—in this case, height. For people who already perceive Black men as threatening, height confers extra threat.
Our findings have important implications when considered alongside recent research demonstrating that young Black men are perceived as taller and more muscular than young White men of equivalent size, which causes them to also seem more threatening to non-Black participants (22). The present findings suggest that the negative consequences of these biased height perceptions (i.e., increased threat perceptions) hinge on how strongly the perceiver believes that Black people are threatening (thus interpreting height as a sign of threat).
Height may also interact with more subtle cues of race, such as Afrocentric features (32, 33), and the effect of height may be determined by contextual cues. Once we controlled for perceived threat in study 2, taller Black men were actually perceived as more competent than shorter Black men. When competence is clearly more relevant than threat, Black men may also benefit from height. Alternately, Black men may also benefit from height if they possess other traits that reduce threat, such as babyfacedness (34).
More broadly, these results highlight the importance of intersections between social categories and physical traits. Just as social categories such as race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status intersect in important ways with each other (35, 36), so too do they influence the impact of physical factors such as height (37), weight (38), babyfacedness (34), and facial attractiveness (39).
We recognize that our findings do not necessarily generalize to perceptions of women. We limited our targets to men because police profiling and threatening stereotypes both target Black males. However, future research should investigate whether the same race–height interactions apply for women. Previous work indicates that White women enjoy at least some of the same benefits of height as White men (7), but no work to date has investigated the effects of height for perceptions of Black women.
We also recognize the potential role of weight in perceptions of threat. Consistent with others’ previous work (22, 25), our stop-and-frisk analyses suggest that weight also plays a key role in judgments of suspicion. Because of accuracy concerns about the weight estimates, which may have been biased (22), and the relatively large effect size of height, we chose to focus on height; however, future work should further investigate how height and weight combine with categories such as race and gender to influence judgments.
Being tall is often discussed as a wholly good trait, so much so that Randy Newman wrote a satirical song that lists reasons why “short people got no reason to live.” However, height means something different for Black men: Height amplifies already problematic perceptions of threat, which can lead to harassment and even injury. When Charles Coleman, Jr.’s mother told him that he “was big and they would automatically see [him] as a threat,” she eloquently summarized what we empirically showed—for Black men, being tall may be less a boon and more a burden.
Method
The University of North Carolina Institutitional Review Board (IRB) approved studies 2 and 3 as well as the pilot study. Participants in these studies indicated consent electronically and received debriefing at the end of the studies. Study 1 did not use human subjects and required no IRB approval.
Study 1 data are available at www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/stopfrisk.page. Data for the pilot study, study 2, and study 3 are available in Supporting Information.
Study 1.
We combined 8 y of publicly available data (2006–2013) documenting the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program. These data include information about every person stopped as part of the program, including race, age, gender, height, weight, and whether the person was frisked, searched, arrested, or issued a summons. Notably, we only analyzed stops in which officers received photo ID, ensuring the relative accuracy of the reported height and age (26).
We cleaned the data by filtering cases with clear errors (i.e., a large number of people had ages of 99 y or higher, or birth years of 1900). We also restricted the dataset to non-Hispanic Black and White males. By focusing on non-Hispanic Black and White males, we minimized problems of distribution: Adult Black and White males have nearly identical means and distributions of height (40).
Study 2.
Participants and design.
Two hundred participants (73% White, 6% Black, 42% women, Mage = 36 y) completed a 2 × 2 [Target Race: Black, White by Target Perspective: Looking Down (Tall), Looking Up (Short)] within-subjects study. With n = 200 at level 2 and n = 16 at level 1 and a subject slope variance of 0.39, we had ∼88% power to detect a small cross-level interaction (41).
Materials.
Creating stimuli to manipulate height and race.
To create stimuli, we photographed 16 male students from the University of North Carolina. Eight students were White, and eight were Black. We photographed each student from two perspectives: looking up and looking down. We intended to manipulate perceived height: If someone is looking down on you, they are likely taller, but if they are looking up at you, they are likely shorter. This perspective manipulation allowed us to manipulate height in a within-subjects design, addressing both power and stimulus sampling issues (42). In particular, our attention to stimulus sampling reduces the likelihood that our effects were driven by the traits of a particular photograph and minimizes the possibility that small variations in luminance or target size explain our effects (42). See Fig. 3 for examples of stimuli.
To check whether our manipulation of height actually worked, we predicted the estimated height of each target by target perspective. The analysis revealed a main effect of target perspective on estimated height, b = 1.78, F(1, 427) = 16.42, P < 0.001, 95% CI [0.91, 2.65], such that targets who were looking down were perceived as taller (M = 71.6 in.) than targets who were looking up (M = 69.8 in.). We found no main effect of race, b = −0.39, F(1, 427) = 0.80, P = 0.37, 95% CI [−1.26, 0.48], although we did find a race by perspective interaction, b = 1.77, F(1, 2,322) = 4.12, P = 0.043, 95% CI [0.06, 3.48], such that perspective had a larger effect for Black targets. Simple main effects show that Black looking-up targets were perceived as 1.3 in. shorter than White looking-up targets, b = −1.27, t(899) = 2.05, P = 0.041, 95% CI [−2.49, −0.05]. The difference between Black and White looking-down targets was not significant, b = 0.49, t(3,018) = 0.80, P = 0.42, 95% CI [−0.72, 1.72].
BaBT.
Participants answered questions adapted from the General Social Survey (gss.norc.org/). We used these questions because they are less confounded with political beliefs than other scales (43) and directly target stereotypes of Black threat. Participants provided their attitudes toward Black, Hispanic, and White people on seven-point bipolar scales for “nonviolent/violent,” “nonthreatening/threatening,” “nonaggressive/aggressive,” and “not dangerous/dangerous.” Questions about Hispanic targets were included to decrease the focus on Black and White targets and reduce the effect of social desirability on responses.
To create an index variable representing participants’ BaBT, we subtracted participants’ attitudes about White targets from their attitudes about Black targets to capture the relative difference in participants’ attitudes (believing Blacks are more violent than Whites) rather than their overall attitudes (believing people are generally violent regardless of race). Then, we averaged the four difference scores together.
Procedure.
Participants rated 16 photographs of college-aged males on five traits: competent, likable, attractive, threatening, and aggressive. These photographs were counterbalanced, such that each target was seen by half of the participants as looking up and by the other half as looking down. The first item captured competence, and the last two items captured threat. We initially included “likable” and “attractive” as competence items but removed them as suggested by reviewers and the editor; this change did not influence our results. Participants also estimated the height of each target, in inches. After completing these ratings, participants completed the BaBT scale.
Analytic strategy.
We again accounted for between-participant variance by using hierarchical linear modeling, with responses nested within participants. We allowed slopes to vary for both race and perspective manipulations to provide a more precise model and allow cross-level interaction with BaBT.
Study 3.
Participants and design.
Two hundred eight participants (75% White, 10% Black, 61% women, Mage = 38 y) completed a 2 × 2 (Target Race: Black, White by Described Height: Tall, Short) within-subjects study. This study sought to replicate the three-way interaction of study 2 with stimuli that more specifically manipulate height. With n = 208 at level 2 and n = 8 at level 1 and a subject slope variance of 0.28, we had ∼90% power to detect a small cross-level interaction (41).
Materials and procedure.
To manipulate race, we used 20 Black male and 20 White male faces from the Chicago Face Database (44). These faces were chosen based on age; all targets were between 21 and 29 y old. To manipulate height, we described an encounter with each target in which the target was either taller or shorter than the participant. Participants rated eight targets using the same competence and threat items as in study 2. Participants then completed the BaBT scale. The analytic strategy was identical to that of study 2.
Preregistration Details.
We note a few points of discrepancy between our preregistrations and the presented results. (i) The study 2 preregistration did not include the specific hypothesis that people higher in BaBT would judge tall White men as especially competent. (ii) The study 3 preregistration notes the inclusion of BaBT as a potential moderator but does not explicitly state the specific hypotheses. (iii) The specific traits used in the “competence” and “threat” composites were not listed in the preregistrations.
END OF ARTICLE
[6]
VOX.COMBLACK PEOPLE ARE STILL SUFFERING FROM POLICE VIOLENCE. IS AMERICA STILL LISTENING?24 MAY 2019
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/5/24/18636305/police-violence-eric-garner-sandra-bland-black-lives-matter
Five years after the rise of Black Lives Matter, activists are still protesting. But national attention to police misconduct has waned.
It’s been nearly five years since several high-profile incidents of police violence spurred racial justice protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and chants of “black lives matter!” began to echo across the country.
The deaths of several black men and women, including Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile, drew national attention to issues of race and policing and spurred on demands for police reform.
But recent developments in two high-profile cases raise questions about whether police violence is still a flashpoint issue — or if national attention to the problem has faded.
In early May, a previously unreleased video recorded by Sandra Bland, the black woman whose 2015 death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, emerged. The video showed Bland’s perspective of the traffic stop that led to her arrest, and it contradicted police claims that she posed a threat to the officer who pulled her over. Bland’s family and others have since demanded that the investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death be reopened.
About a week later, the disciplinary hearing for Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer accused of recklessly using a department-prohibited chokehold on Eric Garner, kicked off in New York City. Garner, an unarmed black man, died in 2014 shortly after being restrained by Pantaleo, and officers failed to immediately render first aid. Video of his arrest, and his gasps of “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for activists.
Pantaleo, who is still employed by the NYPD, was not indicted by a grand jury in 2014, but he’s now facing a department trial that could result in him losing his job as an officer. Several new details about the case have been revealed to the public, including the fact that a police lieutenant texted a different NYPD officer that Garner’s death was “not a big deal,” and that another officer inflated charges against Garner when filling out an arrest form after the man died.
The new revelations in both the Bland and Garner cases are striking — yet they arrive at a time where national anger over police violence doesn’t seem to be as strong as it was when their deaths occurred.
More recent police shootings and incidents of police brutality still draw local attention and activist outrage, but they often fail to attract the same level of public attention they did from 2014 to 2016. At the federal level, the Trump administration has halted efforts to enact police accountability measures. And years into racial justice activists’ fight for structural reform, many of the systems that shield officers from accountability remain in place. In short, it appears that public interest in these problems is waning, along with the momentum to push for police reform — even as the need for these changes remain.
Black and brown Americans still suffer from police violence
The Washington Post has been tracking fatal police encounters since 2015, and for the past four years, the database has found that roughly 1,000 people have died in police shootings each year. So far, 363 people have been killed by police in 2019 alone, according to the Post database.
Even now, these shootings continue to disproportionately affect black Americans. A 2018 article in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health found that while roughly half of police shooting victims are white, young black Americans and Native Americans are disproportionately likely to be killed in a police shooting.
And as Vox’s Dara Lind and German Lopez have previously reported, significant racial disparities have also been seen in federal data and other media-compiled databases of shootings, like the Guardian’s Counted project, which ran from 2015 to 2016.
Black people are also more likely than whites to be exposed to arrests and traffic stops that could potentially escalate into violent encounters.
But recent police violence incidents and shootings haven’t dominated headlines or spurred calls for federal investigations and demands for national police reform efforts in the same way they did three or four years ago. And while some stories that center on the deaths of unarmed black men — such as the fatal 2018 shooting of 22-year old Stephon Clark in his family’s Sacramento, California, backyard — continue to go viral, they tend to fade from public view more quickly, even as activists on the ground continue their protests.
“Police violence — beatings, Taserings, killings — and criminal justice reform more broadly were arguably the leading domestic news storyline during the final two years of the Obama administration,” Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery wrote last year. In 2018, he added, “the issue has all but vanished from the national political conversation.”
That trend has been noticed by other writers, like the Week’s Bonnie Kristian, who recently wrote that part of the problem may be that public opinion of police has improved among some groups:
Indignation about police misconduct and calls for reform were fading among the white majority by early 2016, as I wrote here at The Week at the time. Polling in late 2015 showed white Americans found police more trustworthy after 18 months of notorious police custody deaths and resultant protests. Already it was becoming evident that cases which once would (and should) have provoked national controversy were increasingly met with desensitization and indifference outside of local protests.
In 2017, a Gallup poll showed that public confidence in police was back to its historical average, with 57 percent of those polled saying they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in police compared to 52 percent in 2015. This was largely driven by shifts among white Americans, with more people expressing confidence in police in the 2015-17 period than from 2012 to 2014 (61 percent to 58 percent). During that same time confidence in police fell among black Americans, going from 35 precent in 2012-14 to 30 percent in 2015-17.
Black Americans are also significantly less likely to view police “warmly” when compared to white Americans.
There could be several reasons for the change in the national discussion of policing, but one factor stands out in particular: the election of President Donald Trump. Trump’s election and presidency has consumed a significant amount of media attention and public discussion, leaving little space for discussions of policy issues like police reform.
The Trump administration has also effectively halted federal momentum on policing reform. Under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration announced it would review old police reform agreements between the federal government and police departments and also stop entering into new ones.
In cities like Baltimore and Chicago, the Justice Department went so far as to attempt to intervene in ongoing reform efforts, arguing that reform agreements would hamper effectiveness and morale of police officers.
Lack of police accountability is still very much a problem
In recent years, several of the most high-profile cases of police violence have ended with officers not facing charges or not being convicted. This is largely due to longstanding legal standards giving officers wide latitude to use force.
It is possible the continued dismissal of police misconduct cases by police departments or the legal system — especially in incidents caught on video — has created a sense of futility, or discouragement, among some people who were first exposed to police violence incidents back in 2014.
While some officers involved in police violence are never indicted, in other cases, like the case of Michael Rosfeld, a former East Pittsburgh officer who fatally shot 17-year-old Antwon Rose in 2018, officers faced trial but were not convicted. Convictions remain very rare in police shooting cases, and officers who are given prison time for their involvement in shootings is rarer still.
In fact, the only acknowledgement of wrongdoing often comes in the form of settlements given to the families of police-shooting victims. But these settlements, which usually arrive after lawsuits (and in some cases aren’t given), are far from the systemic reform that activists and families of victims have demanded.
And because these protections largely hinge on if an officer had a “reasonable” belief that he or others were in danger rather than if a threat was actually expressed, the result is that some police misconduct or excessive force is shielded from prosecution. Efforts to change that standard have emerged in states like California, but no laws have yet to be passed.
There are other longstanding practices within police departments that make accountability for police misconduct, abuse, and fatal shootings a challenge. A 2016 New York Times report and 2017 Washington Post investigation found that officers who were fired from departments for misconduct or criminal behavior often go on to be hired by other departments or are rehired by the same agency that dismissed them. And tracking officer misconduct, or viewing body camera footage of a police shooting, remains difficult for the public.
Public attention has waned, but activists continue to push for reform
Though police violence and lack of accountability remains a very real problem, Americans in general simply seem less interested in hearing about it — which makes it more difficult for activists and politicians to push through tangible reforms.
However, that doesn’t mean people have given up. Instead, groups seem to be putting more of an emphasis on pushing for structural change from within.
The police reform-oriented Campaign Zero and the Movement for Black Lives have outlined detailed policy plans aimed at policing, but they have also demanded changes to education systems and the economy and joined a larger set of groups making up the anti-Trump “resistance.”
Other groups are seeking to boost black political engagement in the upcoming election and things like the 2020 census in an effort to force politicians to address black voters’ concerns about racism and police accountability.Activists say their fight for justice is as urgent now as it was five years ago, and that while systemic policy change may still be a work in progress, their movement has had an impact. “Since we started using the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, since the jump start of this current iteration of the Black Liberation movement, I know the world has transformed,” Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, wrote in a 2018 HuffPost op-ed. “I know the world is changing.”
END OF ARTICLE
NEW REPORT IACHR:
IACHR [Inter-American Commission on Human Rights]NEW IACHR REPORT ADDRESSES POLICE VIOLENCE AGAINST BLACK AMERICANS25 MARCH 2019
https://ijrcenter.org/2019/03/25/new-iachr-report-addresses-police-violence-against-black-americans/
IACHR REPORT:POLICE VIOLENCE AGAINST AFRO DESCENDANTS IN THE UNITED STATES
http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/PoliceUseOfForceAfrosUSA.pdf
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USAANOTHER YEAR, AN OTHER UNARMED BLACK MAN KILLED BY THE POLICE
https://www.amnestyusa.org/another-year-another-unarmed-black-man-killed-by-police/
[7]
BLACK LIVES MATTER/WEBSITE
https://blacklivesmatter.com
YOUTUBE.COMWOMAN SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE OFFICER IN HER OWN HOME
AMNESTY INTERNATIONALDEADLY FORCE AND POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/deadly-force-police-accountability/
[9]
AMNESTY INTERNATIONALDEADLY FORCE AND POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY
https://www.amnestyusa.org/issues/deadly-force-police-accountability/
[10]
THE WASHINGTON POSTPOLICE SHOOTINGS 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2016/
Fatal Force
962people have been shot and killed by police in 2016. This database is based on news reports, public records, social media and other sources.
Read about our methodology. Download the data.
See the 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2015 databases.
[11]
THE WASHINGTON POSTPOLICE SHOOTINGS 2019
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/
Fatal Force
717people have been shot and killed by police in 2019Read about our methodology. Download the data. See the 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015 databases. Submit a tip
Updated Oct. 17 at 8:24 p.m. [12]
”About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys in America can expect to die at the hands of police, according to a new analysis of deaths involving law enforcement officers.”
LA TIMESGETTING KILLED BY POLICE IS A LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR BLACK MEN IN AMERICA
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men
[13]
” That makes them 2.5 times more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with cops.
LA TIMESGETTING KILLED BY POLICE IS A LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR BLACK MEN IN AMERICA
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men
LA TIMESGETTING KILLED BY POLICE IS A LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR BLACK MEN IN AMERICA
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men
[15]
[WARNING ABOUT WIKIPEDIAWIKIPEDIA MAY NOT BE THAT ACCURATE AND SINCE THIS TRAGIC NEWS HAS HAPPENED RECENTLY, MAYBE NOT ALL THE WRITTEN FACTS ARE THAT ACCURATE/RELY MORE ON YOUTUBE, ABC NEWS AND OTHER NEWSSOURCES I MENTION HERE]
WIKIPEDIAKILLING OF ATATIANA JEFFERSON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Atatiana_Jefferson
ABC NEWSTEXAS COP NEVER IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS POLICE BEFORE FATALLY SHOOTING ATATIANA JEFFERSON IN HER OWN HOME: OFFICIAL13 OCTOBER 2019
https://abcnews.go.com/US/officer-bodycam-shooting-killing-woman-home/story?id=66237208
A white police officer responding to a call early Saturday for a welfare check at a home in Fort Worth, Texas, fired a shot into a bedroom window, striking and killing a 28-year-old black woman who a neighbor said was not a threat.
Relatives of the woman who was fatally shot identified her as Atatiana Jefferson, and said she worked as a human resources officer for a Fort Worth company and that she lived in the home with an 8-year-old nephew, Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA reported.(MORE: 4 people killed in ‘mass casualty shooting’ at illegal gambling club in Brooklyn: Police)
During a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Fort Worth Police Lt. Brandon O’Neil said the officer who opened fire on Jefferson never identified himself as a police officer.
“What the officer observed and why he did not announce ‘police’ will be addressed as the investigation continues,” O’Neil said.
The NAACP released a statement on Twitter calling the fatal shooting of Jefferson “UNACCEPTABLE!”
“The acts of yet another ’trained’ police officer have resulted in the death of #AtatianaJefferson Gun downed in her own home,” the NAACP wrote. “If we are not safe to call the police, if we are not safe in our homes, where can we find peace? We demand answers. We demand justice.”
James Smith, a neighbor, said the shooting unfolded after he called the non-emergency police number to report seeing the lights on and the front door open at Jefferson’s home. He said police arrived at the home around 2:30 a.m. without activating their lights and sirens.
“I called my police department for a welfare check,” Smith told WFAA. “No domestic violence, no arguing, nothing that they should have been concerned about as far as them coming with guns drawn to my neighbor’s house.”
Hearing the gunshot shocked him, he said.
“I don’t know what went on in that house, but I know she wasn’t a threat,” Smith said. “I’m still kind of broken and shocked. They tell me I shouldn’t feel bad. But I feel bad cause had I not called the police department, she would probably still be alive today.”
Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt said Jefferson’s “understandably heartbroken” relatives told him that Jefferson and her nephew were playing video games when they heard noises outside.
“She went to investigate at the window. An officer was on the other side who shouted commands and before she had a moment to respond, he shot her to death,” said Merritt, who also represents the family of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old black man shot to death in September 2018 by white former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, who mistook Jean’s apartment for her own and wrongly suspected he was an intruder.
The Fort Worth Police Department did not release the name of the officer.
O’Neil said police received a call at 2:25 a.m. to respond to the home on East Allen Avenue. He said two officers arrived at the house at 2:29 am. and parked near Jefferson’s home, but not in front of the residence. He said the officers walked around the back of the house, and that one of the officers observed a person through the rear window of the home and opened fire.
Body-camera footage released by the department shows the officer approaching a rear window of the home with his gun drawn. The officer sees the woman through the window, shouts, “Put your hands up, show me your hands,” and fires one shot.
The video seems to confirm the officer never identified himself as police before he opened fire.
The front door appears open in the body-camera footage, but a screen door looks to be closed in front of it. The officer doesn’t appear to knock.
“Perceiving a threat, the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” a statement from the police department reads.(MORE: Cop never ID’d himself as police before killing woman in her own home: Official)
Responding officers entered the home, located the shooting victim and began providing emergency care.
Jefferson died at the scene.
“An 8-year-old male, Ms. Jefferson’s nephew, was inside the room during this time,” O’Neil said.
O’Neil declined to answer questions from reporters, saying Police Chief Ed Kraus is scheduled to hold a news conference about the shooting on Monday.
He said the officer who shot Jefferson is scheduled to be interviewed on Monday by the department’s Major Case Unit investigators.
A firearm was recovered from the woman’s home, but police did not say where the gun was found in the house. The investigation is ongoing.
The officer, who’s been with the department since April 2018, has been placed on administrative leave.
Merritt set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for Jefferson’s funeral. As of Sunday afternoon, more than $81,000 had been raised.
Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price released a statement saying the Police Chief Ed Kraus and his command staff “are acting with immediacy and transparency to conduct a complete and thorough investigation.”
She said the case will be turned over to the Tarrant County District Attorney Law Enforcement Incident Team to investigate the incident further.
“Writing a statement like this is tragic and something that should never be necessary,” Price said in her statement. “A young woman has lost her life, leaving her family in unbelievable grief. All of Fort Worth must surround Atatiana Jefferson’s family with prayers, love and support.”
END OF THE ARTICLE OF ABC NEWS
THE NEW YORK TIMESWHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FORT WORTH POLICE SHOOTING OFATATIANA JEFFERSON
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/aaron-dean-atatiana-jefferson.html
Aaron Dean, the officer who shot Ms. Jefferson in her own home, resigned hours before he was charged with murder.
Days after a woman was fatally shot by the Fort Worth police, the officer who fired one bullet through her bedroom window when responding to a call from a concerned neighbor was arrested and charged with murder.
Although the circumstances have varied, it was yet another example of a white officer killing a black civilian, raising nationwide questions about policing practices and racial profiling. The shock of Saturday’s shooting further strained the relationship between residents and the Fort Worth Police Department.
The woman who was killed, Atatiana Jefferson, had been up late playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew, according to the family’s lawyer. She was shot by an officer, Aaron Y. Dean, who was standing in her backyard with a flashlight and a gun. He resigned on Monday, hours before the police chief had planned to fire him.
Here is what we know about the shooting and its aftermath:
Aaron Dean was released from jail and is not cooperating
Mr. Dean, who had been placed on administrative leave before he resigned, has not answered questions from investigators, said Ed Kraus, the interim police chief.
He was arrested without incident in his lawyer’s office on Monday and released from the Tarrant County jail later that night after posting a $200,000 bond. His lawyer has not responded to calls seeking comment, but he told the local NBC television station that Mr. Dean is sorry and that his family was in shock.
Mr. Dean joined the department in April 2018, one month after completing his classes at the police academy, and the only notable entry in his personnel file was for a traffic accident, Chief Kraus said.
Officer Manny Ramirez, the president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association, said Mr. Dean had never been the subject of an investigation and was “very shaken up” by the shooting.
Fellow police officers condemned the shooting
Chief Kraus grew emotional this week as he described how the killing would undoubtedly erode the trust that he said officers had worked to build with the people they serve.
“I likened it to a bunch of ants building an ant hill, and somebody comes with a hose and washes it away,” he said. “They just have to start from scratch.”
Chief Kraus said he had spoken to scores of officers who all said they supported the quick move to arrest Mr. Dean and charge him with murder.
Officer Ramirez said he and other officers had been dumbfounded as to why Mr. Dean pulled the trigger. Mr. Ramirez added that there was “no way to explain” his actions.
Atatiana Jefferson wanted to attend medical school
Ms. Jefferson, 28, sold medical pharmaceutical equipment from home while studying to apply to medical school. She had earned a degree in biology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2014.
Ms. Jefferson was a loving aunt who would play basketball and video games with her nephews, her sister Amber Carr said. She had recently moved in with her mother, who had health problems — and learned about her daughter’s shooting while in a hospital.
The police were responding to a neighbor’s call
One of Ms. Jefferson’s neighbors, James Smith, had called a nonemergency line at 2:23 a.m. on Saturday to express concern that the doors of Ms. Jefferson’s house had been open for several hours.
“I haven’t seen anybody moving around,” he told the dispatcher in a calm voice. “It’s not normal for them to have the doors open this time of night.”
Mr. Smith’s niece later said that he was upset with how the police responded, and that he had never suggested a burglary was taking place.
Chief Kraus said the call was relayed to the two officers who responded as a call for an “open structure,” a vague classification that could mean anything from an abandoned house to a burglary in progress. It was not a welfare check, in which case officers would often knock on the house’s doors or call inside.
A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window. When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.
“It makes sense that she would have a gun if she felt that she was being threatened or that there was someone in the back yard,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday.
YOUTUBE.COMCOP SEEN SHOOTING, KILLING WOMAN IN HER OWN HOME/ABC NEWS
YOUTUBE.COMWOMAN SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE OFFICER IN HER OWN HOME
YOUTUBE.COMPROTESTS IN FORT WORTH AFTER ATATIANA JEFFERSON IN HER OWN HOME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clUG0hxQlW0
[16]
SEE NOTE 15
[17]
WIKIPEDIAKILLING OF ATATIANA JEFFERSON
[18]
”During a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Fort Worth Police Lt. Brandon O’Neil said the officer who opened fire on Jefferson never identified himself as a police officer.
“What the officer observed and why he did not announce ‘police’ will be addressed as the investigation continues,” O’Neil said.”
ABC NEWSTEXAS COP NEVER IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS POLICE BEFORE FATALLY SHOOTING ATATIANA JEFFERSON IN HER OWN HOME: OFFICIAL13 OCTOBER 2019
https://abcnews.go.com/US/officer-bodycam-shooting-killing-woman-home/story?id=66237208
[19]
YOUTUBE.COMWOMAN SHOT AND KILLED BY POLICE OFFICER IN HER OWN HOME
[20]
”When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.”
THE NEW YORK TIMESWHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FORT WORTH POLICE SHOOTING OFATATIANA JEFFERSON15 OCTOBER 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/aaron-dean-atatiana-jefferson.html
WIKIPEDIAKILLING OF ATATIANA JEFFERSON/NEPHEW’S ACCOUNT
Nephew’s account[edit]
Jefferson’s nephew told the authorities that while playing video games they heard noises outside the window. Jefferson took her gun from her purse and pointed it at the window, before she was shot. The nephew’s account was used as the basis for the arrest warrant.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
WIKIPEDIAKILLING OF ATATIANA JEFFERSON
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Atatiana_Jefferson
[21]
”A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window. When Ms. Jefferson heard noises coming from outside, she had taken a handgun from her purse and pointed it toward the window, her 8-year-old nephew told officials, according to an arrest warrant released on Tuesday.
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.”
THE NEW YORK TIMESWHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FORT WORTH POLICE SHOOTING OFATATIANA JEFFERSON15 OCTOBER 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/aaron-dean-atatiana-jefferson.html
[22]
”A gun was found on the floor of Ms. Jefferson’s bedroom near the window.
THE NEW YORK TIMESWHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FORT WORTH POLICE SHOOTING OFATATIANA JEFFERSON15 OCTOBER 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/us/aaron-dean-atatiana-jefferson.html
[23]
”The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the individual right to keep and bear arms.[1][2][a] It was ratified on December 15, 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
WIKIPEDIASECOND AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
WIKIPEDIA
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States
Article [II] (Amendment 2 – Bearing Arms)
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
[24]
But the other officer who responded with Mr. Dean said she could only see Ms. Jefferson’s face through the window when Mr. Dean fired, according to the warrant, and Chief Kraus has defended her right to have a gun in her own home.
THE NEW YORK TIMESWHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FORT WORTH POLICE SHOOTING OFATATIANA JEFFERSON15 OCTOBER 2019
[25]
NAACP/WEBSITE
[26]
NAACP ON TWITTERSTATEMENT
UNACCEPTABLE! The acts of yet another “trained” police officer have resulted in the death of #AtatianaJefferson. Gun downed in her own home. If we are not safe to call the police, if we are not safe in our homes, where can we find peace? We demand answers. We demand justice.
22.6K5:44 AM – Oct 13, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy12.6K people are talking about this[27]
VOX.COMFORT WORTH OFFICER CHARGED WITH MURDER IN KILLING OF BLACK WOMAN IN HER OWN HOME15 OCTOBER 2019
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/13/20912212/atatiana-jefferson-fort-worth-police-shooting-texas-aaron-dean-murder
Aaron Dean, the officer who shot Atatiana Jefferson, resigned on Monday, hours before he was booked on murder charges.
In the days since a black woman was fatally shot in her Fort Worth, Texas, home by a white police officer performing a welfare check, calls for police accountability have been nonstop in a community whose trust in law enforcement has already been shaken by other police shootings and the death of Botham Jean in nearby Dallas.
Local authorities have moved quickly in their response, saying that they have every intention of taking action against the officer who fired through a home window, killing 28-year-old Atatiana Koquice Jefferson on October 12 as she stood in her bedroom with her 8-year-old nephew, who she had been playing video games with.
A neighbor had called a non-emergency police line minutes before saying that he wanted someone to make sure that Jefferson and her nephew were okay after seeing their open door so late in the evening. When police arrived, they walked around the outside of the home instead of announcing themselves at the front door, and one officer fired his weapon at a window shortly after entering the home’s backyard, striking and killing Jefferson in the process.
On Monday, the Fort Worth Police Department announced that Aaron Dean, the officer who shot Jefferson, had resigned from the department hours before he would have been terminated. That same evening, Dean was booked into the Tarrant County Correction Center on murder charges. He was later released on a $200,000 bond.
The police department has attempted to show residents that it is taking Jefferson’s case seriously and that it understands the fury her death, as yet another example of a black person being killed by law enforcement, has ignited in Fort Worth and nationally.
“To the citizens and residents of our city, we feel and understand your anger and your disappointment and we stand by you as we work together to make Fort Worth a better place for us all,” Fort Worth Police Sgt. Chris Daniel said during an evening press conference on October 14.
Dean, who was hired in August 2017 and became an officer nearly a year later in April 2018, is currently not cooperating with the investigation into the shooting and has not answered questions from investigators, interim Fort Worth Police Chief Ed Kraus told reporters earlier on Monday.
Kraus also said he has asked the FBI to look into the shooting for possible civil rights violations, adding that Dean would have been fired by the police department on Monday for failing to follow its policies on use of force and deescalation, and for unprofessional conduct. Police previously said that they plan to submit the camera footage and other evidence to the Tarrant County District Attorney at the end of the investigation.
The department says that despite Dean’s resignation, it will continue its internal investigation as if he were still an officer. Dean’s record will also show that he was dishonorably discharged from the department.
“None of this information can ease the pain of Atatiana’s family, but I hope it shows the community that we take these incidents seriously,” Kraus told reporters.Jefferson’s family, meanwhile, has criticized the fact that Dean was allowed to resign and has maintained calls for an independent investigation into the shooting, saying that they want justice through an “independent, thorough, and transparent process.”
“Fort Worth has a culture that has allowed this to happen,” Lee Merritt, a lawyer representing Jefferson’s family, said over the weekend. “There still needs to be a reckoning.”
The shooting of Jefferson in her own home has drawn national attention
At around 2 am local time on October 12, a neighbor of Jefferson’s called a non-emergency hotline, saying he was concerned about an open door at the woman’s residence and wanted to make sure she was okay. According to a statement released by the Fort Worth Police Department on Saturday, officers arrived at the home at around 2:25 am to respond to an “open structure call” and, after seeing the open door, walked around the perimeter of the residence.
The department said that while doing so, officers saw a person inside standing near a window. “Perceiving a threat the officer drew his duty weapon and fired one shot striking the person inside the residence,” police said.
That person was Jefferson, who was shot while standing in a bedroom. After firing, officers entered the home and began providing emergency aid, but the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.
The department also released body camera footage of the shooting, showing what happened outside of Jefferson’s home as well as the residence itself, which had a door open and the lights on inside. The video shows two officers walking around the outside of Jefferson’s home, looking into screen doors before walking into the backyard. Moving toward a closed window on the first floor, one of the officers, who has since been identified as Dean, quickly points a flashlight at it before drawing his weapon.
Dean then yells, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” before firing a shot less than a second later, seemingly while in the middle of repeating his commands. At no point in the released video do the men clearly identify themselves as police officers.
In addition to the statement and the body camera video, the police department also released edited footage of a firearm officers said they found at the residence, but it did not offer any additional information about where Jefferson was in relation to it or if the weapon was ever visible to the officers. Texas is an open-carry state and state residents are allowed to possess and carry firearms with few restrictions.
The initial release of the image immediately drew criticism, with observers arguing that the department was attempting to suggest that Jefferson’s weapon was relevant to her death. The police department later said that this was not its intention.
“Nobody looked at that video and said there was any doubt that this officer acted inappropriately,” Kraus later told reporters. “I get it. We’re trying to train our officers better.”
The shooting has left Fort Worth’s black residents devastated
Jefferson’s shooting, which is the seventh local police shooting involving a civilian since June 1 according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has left the area’s black residents angered and confused. Community members say the shooting proves they cannot call the police for assistance.
“The Fort Worth police murdered this woman. They murdered this woman in her own house,” said Rev. Michael Bell, a local pastor who joined a group of community leaders for a Saturday press conference. “And now, African Americans, we have no recourse. If we call the police, they will come and kill us. And we know that.”
A similar fear was echoed by James Smith, the neighbor of Jefferson’s who called police after noticing the open door and lights at her home, saying he was concerned about Jefferson and her 8-year-old nephew. “I’m shaken. I’m mad. I’m upset. And I feel it’s partly my fault,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on October 12. “If I had never dialed the police department, she’d still be alive.”
In audio of Smith’s call released by the police department on Sunday, the man can be heard telling a police operator that the doors of the home had been open since 10 pm Friday and that he was concerned because he did not see any movement in the house.“I don’t know what went on in the house, but I know that she wasn’t a threat,” Smith later told reporters.
The shooting of Jefferson, who was born in Dallas and graduated from Louisiana’s Xavier University in 2014 with a biology degree, has quickly drawn comparisons to the 2018 shooting of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old black man fatally shot by former off-duty Dallas officer Amber Guyger as he ate ice cream in his apartment.
Lee Merritt, a local civil rights attorney who represents Jean’s family, is also working with Jefferson’s relatives. He said the weekend shooting is yet another example of black people being unable to live safely in their own homes.
“You didn’t hear the officer say ‘gun, gun, gun,’ you didn’t hear him — he didn’t have time to perceive a threat,” Merritt told reporters on Saturday. “That’s murder.”
“We expect a thorough and expedient investigation,” he added. A GoFundMe created by Merritt on behalf of Jefferson’s family was posted on October 13 and had collected more than $210,000 by Tuesday morning.
Before the shooting, Merritt says that Jefferson, who was called “Tay” by her loved ones, was playing video games with her nephew. The boy was in the bedroom with her when the shooting occurred, and stayed at the homes as Jefferson, who worked in pharmaceutical equipment sales and was saving money for medical school, was helping take care of the home for her sick mother, who was in the hospital at the time of the shooting.
Merritt says that when she went to the bedroom window on Saturday morning, Jefferson was concerned after hearing noise outside, adding that she was likely worried about the possibility of a prowler or burglar being near the home.
“Law enforcement has not said that she wielded a weapon,” Merritt told the New York Times on Sunday. “Also, it wouldn’t matter because that’s her home.”
Speaking to CNN that same day, Merritt said that while Jefferson’s family has spoken to local police, they want an independent agency to take over the investigation into the shooting. “We don’t think that Fort Worth police should be investigating it on their own,” he said.
The police department and city officials are working to show that they take Jefferson’s death seriously
On Sunday, the Fort Worth Police Department held a brief press conference to discuss the shooting but offered little new information about what transpired in the early morning hours of October 12.
The agency largely stuck to a prepared statement, saying that it shared the “very real and valid concerns” raised by local residents and Jefferson’s family.
“The tragic loss of life has major ramifications for all involved, especially the family of Ms. Atatiana Jefferson. We have communicated with the family and have shared our serious and heartfelt concern for this unspeakable loss,” Fort Worth Police Lt. Brandon O’Neill said.
The department did not answer questions about why it released information about a gun in Jefferson’s home and also declined to answer questions about the exact nature of the “threat” perceived by the officer.
However, the department did confirm some previous statements already made by Merritt and Smith, noting that Jefferson’s nephew was in the room with her when the shooting took place and that the officer who shot the woman did not identify himself as law enforcement before firing.
“What the officer observed, and why he did not announce ‘police,’ will be addressed as the investigation continues,” O’Neil told reporters.
On Monday, however, the department gave several additional updates, likely in an effort to mitigate concerns that the agency would protect Dean from punishment. Along with announcing Dean’s resignation, Police Chief Kraus said he regretted that the department shared images of the firearm in Jefferson’s home, saying she had every right to possess it.
“We’re homeowners in the state of Texas,” he said. “I can’t imagine most of us — if we thought we had somebody outside our house that shouldn’t be and we had access to a firearm — that we wouldn’t act very similarly to how she acted.”
Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price has also issued several statements, including an open letter on Monday where she said that the city was “heartbroken” at Jefferson’s death. Price also denounced the initial images of a weapon in Jefferson’s home, and apologized to Jefferson’s family and to James Smith, saying that his call about his neighbor should have never culminated in her death.
In the wake of the shooting, Price says she has asked the city’s manager to hire a “third-party panel of national experts to review the police department. Everything from top to bottom.”
“Justice is critical here — but it will not bring back the life of a young woman who was taken too soon,” Price added in the letter. “This is a pivotal moment in our city, and we will act swiftly with transparency.”
Jefferson’s death has been compared to the 2018 murder of Botham Jean
News of Jefferson’s death, which comes less than two weeks after Amber Guyger was convicted of murdering Jean and sentenced to 10 years in prison, adds to already intense attention to policing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
In recent months, Dallas residents have voiced several concerns about the Dallas Police Department, concerns that were only intensified by evidence revealed during Guyger’s trial and by the October 4 death of Joshua Brown, a black man who testified against Guyger last month. The Dallas Police Department has condemned speculation that its officers were somehow connected to Brown’s death, saying that the man was killed in a drug deal gone bad.
According to the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database, Jefferson is one of at least 709 people who have been killed by police since the start of 2019. The database notes that 32 women have been killed by police officers this year; five of those women were black.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday, members of Jefferson’s family said that it was “inconceivable and confusing” that the woman was shot by police in her home. “It’s another one of those situations where the people that are supposed to protect us are actually not here to protect us,” Amber Carr, Jefferson’s older sister, told NBC Dallas-Fort Worth, adding that she was concerned about the training given to officers.
More concerns about the shooting were raised on Sunday evening as hundreds of people gathered for a rally and vigil on the same street as Jefferson’s home. “Systemic oppression has created risks for black people to be killed,” one attendee, Michelle Anderson, told local reporters. “We talk about state-sanctioned violence — it has always been a culture for black people. So no, it’s not about the training issue.”
Similar concerns have also been raised by national politicians, including several Democratic presidential candidates who shared Jefferson’s story on social media over the weekend.
“Being Black in your own home shouldn’t be a death sentence,” Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted on October 13. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the shooting showed the urgent need for police reform and “federal standards for the use of force.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, called for a federal investigation into the shooting. Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke also weighed in on the latest high-profile police shooting in his home state, saying that people “must demand accountability and promise to fight until no family has to face a tragedy like this again.”
Jefferson’s family and community say they intend to do just that and will push to hold the department accountable for the shooting as the Fort Worth Police Department’s investigation continues.But the family also acknowledged that accountability will not erase the pain and trauma that the shooting has caused. “You want to see justice, but justice don’t bring my sister back,” Carr told reporters on Saturday before breaking down into tears.
[28]
”On September 6, 2018, off-duty Dallas Police Departmentpatrol officer Amber Guyger entered the Dallas, Texas, apartment of Botham Jean and fatally shot him. Guyger said that she had entered the apartment believing it was her own and that she shot Jean believing he was a burglar.[1][2] The fact that Guyger, a white police officer, shot and killed Jean, an unarmed black man, and was initially only charged with manslaughter resulted in protests and accusations of racial bias.[3][4][5] On October 1, 2019, Guyger was found guilty of murder.[6] The next day, she received a sentence of ten years in prison”
WIKIPEDIAMURDER OF BOTHAM JEAN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Botham_Jean
[29]
CNNAMBER GUYGER GETS TEN-YEAR MURDER SENTENCE FOR FATALLY SHOOTING BOTHAM JEAN3 OCTOBER 2019
[30]
DUTCH POLICE OFFICER, WHO SHOT RISHI CHANDRIKASING, ACQUITTED/COURT GIVES POLICE LICENCE TO KILLASTRID ESSED10 JANUARY 2014
https://www.astridessed.nl/dutch-police-officer-who-shot-rishi-chandrikasing-acquittedcourt-gives-police-licence-to-kill/
[31]
CNNAMBER GUYGER GETS TEN-YEAR MURDER SENTENCE FOR FATALLY SHOOTING BOTHAM JEAN3 OCTOBER 2019