All of these statements concerning this incident, with so many assumptions on the part of the some posters, are rather frightening. I would certainly pray that you would not be on my jury, should I ever be accused of a crime. Facts should be what we base our opinions and comments upon, not suppositions or assumptions. "He was scared", he thought the officer was going to tase him, etc. are assumptions and jumping to conclusions without having all of the known evidence. That's what juries are for - to hear the evidence and render a verdict and prior to that, our statements should be "guarded".
Common sense would lead one to conjecture, however, that a perp, once stopped by police, acts aggressively for one or more reasons: under the influence of drugs, which are affecting "better judgement", an outstanding warrant, which would put him behind bars, once again, for a long time and he deems the risk-versus-reward equation to be in his favor at the time. Most rational individuals, when confronted by armed policemen issuing reasonable orders, choose to comply and sort out the differences in a court of law. I posit that these are not rational individuals and, once a scuffle ensues and the adrenalin flows, all bets are off.
To assert that these unfortunate occurrences, infrequent as they are
STATISTICALLY (research your facts) to racism, says more about the biases of the accuser than the person/cop who is being accused. I am not posting to defend cops, nor to condemn a given suspect. I consider myself a seeker of the truth - wherever it leads me. Sometimes it leads to an uncomfortable discovery but, nevertheless, it's the TRUTH. Statistics generally tell the story (although I have a college tome "How To Lie With Statistics" on my shelf, LOL) and, in these cases, "
It's an uncomfortable truth but blacks commit crimes at nearly three times the rate that whites do. Blacks commit 36% of the violent crime in the US even though they are only 13% of the population. So … the likelihood of an encounter with the police is significantly greater if you're black AND, if you don't comply with their orders and aggressively resist - BAD things can happen!
It's no more complicated than this and "racism" on the part of police is statistically proven to be insignificant. Like with doctors, bad judgement kills far more often than not.
Fred
