A person is killed by police. Terrible tragedy in a headline, but how often do you see any critical thinking at work in explaining the cause? When we see such a headline, our interest likely comes from trying to understand what impact this news will have upon our own lives, right?
You will get the mainstream media’s opinion of the cause, but are they really interested in a true explanation? The news follows a business model that intentionally stirs up emotions to make it easier for their audience to receive the established narrative, playing off confirmation biases. I talked about fake news in a previous post. Previously I mentioned looking at major factors and issues major factors and issues
when tackling a complex problem. Those are the important conditions that caused the killing to happen. Without knowing details, typically we can see a handful of likely factors that could be the cause of any fatality with police. Such factors are generally going to fall into either innocent lives are in danger or police lives are in danger. Statistically there are only rare and anecdotal exceptions. Larry Elder mentioned some of these statistics in his 3 Sep 2020 article. Situations have various nuances or contexts, but those really are not going to be related to the root cause. Any demographic, regional, or policy information would be ancillary, and have not been statistically proven otherwise. An objective analyst that focuses on the major factor of the altercation that resulted in a fatality, can clearly see issues contributing to the tragedy. The obvious solution is for people to not violate laws in the first place, but in the real world people still break laws. However, when confronted or caught, resisting arrest or disobeying law enforcement only adds additional violations of the law and escalates the potential for a violent outcome. If 100% of the people in an altercation with police did not resist arrest or disobey directions by police officers, then how many of those fatalities would not have happened? I intend to be respectful and pleasant in any altercations I have with police in the future.
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