Fahran wrote:Major-Tom wrote:This happened weeks ago and the Chicago PD described the interaction 100% differently than the newly released footage shows it. I anticipate more protests in the Upper Midwest.
I'm a bit on the fence about this one for the same reason I'm on the fence about Tamir Rice. I do think a person with a firearm carries an implicit threat, especially when there's reports that gunshots have already been fired. Judging by what CNN reported, it's possible the officer, Eric Stillman, thought Adam Toledo still had the pistol in his hand. I'm not certain how fair it is to argue that force was disproportionate with the benefit of hindsight, especially when less than a second passed between the pistol being seen in Toledo's hand and him dropping it.The video, according to police, shows a gun in Toledo's right hand as he nears an open area of fence next to an empty lot. Toledo turns to his left, toward the officer, and what police say is the gun disappears behind his right side. Toledo begins to raise his hands as he's facing the officer when the officer fires his weapon.
From the time police said the gun was first visible on body-worn camera footage in Toledo's hand, to the time the officer fired his weapon, was eight tenths of a second. In that period of time, his right arm disappears behind the fence before he begins to raise both hands.
That said, implicit racial biases may play a role in incidents like those that led to the killing of Tamir Rice and Adam Toledo. From the article on the study...The study also involved 264 mostly white, female undergraduate students from large public U.S. universities. In one experiment, students rated the innocence of people ranging from infants to 25-year-olds who were black, white or an unidentified race. The students judged children up to 9 years old as equally innocent regardless of race, but considered black children significantly less innocent than other children in every age group beginning at age 10, the researchers found.
The students were also shown photographs alongside descriptions of various crimes and asked to assess the age and innocence of white, black or Latino boys ages 10 to 17. The students overestimated the age of blacks by an average of 4.5 years and found them more culpable than whites or Latinos, particularly when the boys were matched with serious crimes, the study found. Researchers used questionnaires to assess the participants’ prejudice and dehumanization of blacks. They found that participants who implicitly associated blacks with apes thought the black children were older and less innocent.
In another experiment, students first viewed either a photo of an ape or a large cat and then rated black and white youngsters in terms of perceived innocence and need for protection as children. Those who looked at the ape photo gave black children lower ratings and estimated that black children were significantly older than their actual ages, particularly if the child had been accused of a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
“The evidence shows that perceptions of the essential nature of children can be affected by race, and for black children, this can mean they lose the protection afforded by assumed childhood innocence well before they become adults,” said co-author Matthew Jackson, PhD, also of UCLA. “With the average age overestimation for black boys exceeding four-and-a-half years, in some cases, black children may be viewed as adults when they are just 13 years old.”
Side thing, they should have shown black/white girls too, to see how that circle came all the way out.