I see many people make reflexive judgments, some immediately coming to the defense of police officers trying to do a stressful job, and others seeing explicit prejudice as the prime motivator. But I want to focus on the structure of sin at work: it's deep in our society, even in our laws and institutions.
Often the color of an officer who kills an unarmed suspect of color becomes the focus of attention. This is a distraction. With Freddie Gray in Baltimore, 3 of the 6 officers charged are Black. Rather than overt prejudice, the more insidious problem is something called "implicit bias." This is where people are more likely to perceive one person as a threat rather than another. Implicit bias exists even in police officers of color. This fact becomes crucial when officers are making split-second decisions.
Legally, we give great discretion to police officers in the use of force. Based on a pair of Supreme Court rulings (summaries found here and here) in the 1980s, police officers must show that the use of deadly force was "objectively reasonable," i.e. that another officer with similar experience and training would have perceived a similar threat and acted in the same way.
However, because we all live in a racist society that views Black persons as more likely to be criminals, most of us internalize that assumption in our interactions. Such subconscious assumptions mean that when discretion is involved, Black persons are simply more likely to be experienced as a threat, often leading to unnecessary escalation of force, even death.
There is nothing "illegal" about this phenomenon. Thus you can wind up with even progressive district attorneys declaring, "I conclude that this tragic and unfortunate death was the result of a lawful use of deadly police force and that no charges should be brought..." But that does not make them legitimate. An unjust law is no law. So while there are policies and rulings that give great latitude in what is reasonably objective, I will be bold and say these are a violation of a higher law. Spiritually, they are demonic as they perpetuate racist results and sacrifice lives on an altar of bias.
It's not easy to challenge such an unjust law, because the vast majority of us are not responsible for upholding it. But we do uphold it indirectly with our complicity, with our consent to things as they are. We can and should publicly delegitimize these sinful rulings that uphold life-taking practices, as well as be creative in our dissent. In doing so, we stand for a higher law worthy of our assent.
Dissenting in love,
Timothy Murphy
Executive Director