Race Relations and Law Enforcement in the United States of America
incidents of deadly police shootings with a view to identifying a pattern if any and the place of race in the actions of the police officers in the shooting incidents. The crux of the matter appears to be attributing primacy to race as a determinant of police reactions or reactions to perceived danger with race as a concomitant variable in the police officers’ reactions. Among others, the paper will review the Amadou Diallo case in New York, Kathryn Jones in Atlanta and Jason Gomez in Denver.
Amadou Diallo
Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant with no criminal record, was 22 years old when he was killed on Feb. 5, 1999, by four New York City police officers. The officers — Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy — acknowledged firing 41 shots that night, but said they thought that Mr. Diallo was carrying a gun. Mr. Diallo, who came to America more than two years before from Guinea and worked as a street peddler in Manhattan, was hit by 19 bullets while standing in the doorway of his Bronx apartment building. The case set off massive protests across the city, and became a flashpoint for heightened frictions between minority leaders and the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. All four officers, who were in plainclothes, said they approached Mr. Diallo because they thought he fit the description of a man wanted in a rape case. They contended that when he pulled out his wallet to show identification they mistook it for a gun.
Kathryn Johnston
Members of a Georgia narcotics investigation team shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a drug raid in her Atlanta home November 21, 2006.
A search warrant stating crack cocaine was being sold in her apartment allowed the officers to cut through the burglar bars protecting Johnston’s home and burst through her door without identifying themselves.
Johnston, who lived alone, apparently mistook the plainclothes officers for intruders and, according to the prosecutor trying the officers, fired one shot through the door and hit nothing. The police responded, firing 39 shots, killing Johnston and apparently wounding three of their own. Jason Gomez On December 19, Denver police officer Timothy Campbell was standing in the middle of the street in a west Denver neighborhood, his gun pointed at a man. The patrolman had been driving north on Irving Street when he’d passed a 1997 Saturn that seemed suspicious. When Campbell made a U-turn, the Saturn quickly sped down a side street and pulled into a driveway. As the officer drove up, a man — he looked to be in his early thirties, Hispanic, wearing a light, baggy jacket — jumped out of the car and ran. Campbell followed him on foot, through back yards and over fences. The man reached the 3200 block of West Ada Place, where he slipped on a patch of ice. He got up and continued down the street, falling twice more. By now Campbell had closed the gap, and when the man got up again, the two were facing each other, less than ten feet apart. Campbell had his service pistol drawn: a .45-caliber semi-automatic Glock. The man reached into his pants pocket, put his hand behind his back, and then started moving his hand forward. Campbell saw the glint of something metallic. He fired two rounds, paused, and then fired four more. The man fell onto a pile of dirty snow.
The Place of Race in Law Enforcement
For some inexplicable reasons or strange coincidence, it is the blacks and the Hispanics that are always caught committing some crimes, (Ruth & Reitz, 2003, P. 32). This is not to suggest that there is no merit in the claim of disproportionate prosecution for crimes involving certain races and ethnic groupings. The point is that, the races and ethnic groups involved tend to have an unusual criminal propensity. Some have argued that the way the society is structured economically places the concerned races and ethnic groups at a disadvantage. This may be a valid argument. It is also true that the African-Americans have a higher criminal propensity than any other single group in the United States of America. At this point, there cannot be any legal justification for resorting to crime and the reasons are obvious. A lot of African Americans suggest that survival is the sole reason for indulging in crime. For precisely the same reason, other persons are pursuing legitimate enterprises in a bid to survive. It is not strange that school drop outs are highest among the African Americans. It follows that if the basis is weak, the superstructure will as of necessity follow suit. There are many factors impacting the criminal propensity of African Americans. For example, the presence of several liquor stores in typically black populations is perceived as deliberate as it facilitates violent behavior and