The recent killing of an unarmed black man in Sacramento validates distrust of police.
Fear can cause police officers to incorrectly perceive events, says John Powell, the director of UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.
Take the case of Stephon Clark, the unarmed 22-year-old black man killed by two Sacramento police officers last month. In police body cam footage, you can hear the officers yelling “gun” before they open fire.
Police apparently mistook his cell phone for a gun.
“So the police may in fact
have thought this person had a weapon,” Powell told me. “That has nothing to do with the person. It has to do with implicit bias that says every black person is dangerous and therefore I’m prepared, unconsciously, to see a black person as dangerous and with a gun.”
The newest revelations about the shooting raise questions about the police account that they opened fire as Clark moved toward them. According to an independent autopsy, of the eight gunshot wounds Clark sustained, six of them hit him in the back, one on his arm and one in the leg. The two officers fired 20 rounds.
Still, if a police officer can show an “objectively reasonable” fear of an imminent threat to his or her life, a standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989, the use of deadly force is justified.
What Powell tells us we’re looking at is fear by police officers and others based in implicit bias, the stereotypes that affect our judgment in an unconscious manner.
“Fear of people who are slightly outside the norm whether they’re gay, whether they’re black, whether they’re transgender — that’s justification for killing someone? That’s completely crazy,” Powell said.
I was thinking about Clark when I went to Hasta Muerte Coffee, in the Fruitvale neighborhood of East Oakland, last week. In February, a barista refused service to an Oakland police officer.
The worker-owned cafe on the corner of Fruitvale Avenue and East 27th Street opened in November. It explained its policy of “asking police to leave for the physical and emotional safety of our customers and ourselves” in a Feb. 22 Instagram post. The policy applies to armed police officers in uniform — not off-duty cops.
Its reasoning has been lambasted by critics — many of them supporters of the president — who have ripped into the coffee shop for not serving police. But they clearly don’t get it.
There are people who fear the police precisely because of what happened to Clark, who was fatally shot as he stood in his grandmother’s yard. According to police, Clark was a suspect in nearby auto breakins reported in the South Sacramento neighborhood.
The deadly use of force in this case doesn’t fit the alleged crimes.
And this is why there’s a need for safe spaces.
Studies show that people of color have been targeted unfairly by police. And the current administration is attempting to limit the participation of transgender people in the military while the Justice Department continues to tear apart the families of law-abiding undocumented immigrants — in a country that was usurped by European immigrants.
It is distressing to be targeted, and Hasta Muerte provides a teachable lesson for law enforcement — and for us. The shop is a constant reminder of the reality many of us face, a reality that needs to be changed.
“The coffee shop’s recognition of endemic racism in our society is a legitimate concern,” said Larry Organ, an attorney with the California Civil Rights Law Group, an employment and discrimination firm. “People are scared — black people in particular are scared when they get pulled over by the police. Similarly, police are scared when they pull over black people. And that is not a good recipe.”
For those who have criticized Hasta Muerte’s position as discriminatory and illegal — well, they’re wrong. The shop’s rule isn’t violating California’s civil rights laws, Organ said. “It’s not based on an immutable characteristic, so it’s not illegal,” Organ said.
Fearing the color of someone’s skin — or simply making judgments based on skin color — is not only racist and deadly, it’s in the fabric of the way laws are enforced and punishment is meted out in the U.S.
In June 2016, Stanford researchers, led by psychologist and racial bias expert Jennifer Eberhardt, released a study that found that Oakland police officers are much more likely to stop and search black drivers and pedestrians than white ones.
The study found that Oakland officers were four times more likely to search black men than white men during a traffic or pedestrian stop. What’s more, black drivers and pedestrians were also much more likely to be handcuffed, even when the stop didn’t end in an arrest.
That’s because officers are much more likely to stop blacks when they can determine their race before the stop.
I’m not arguing against the police. Protecting our streets is a difficult task, and I respect their work. But police officers need implicit bias and deescalation training, because in marginalized communities throughout this country the police have also been the perpetrators of violence.
Now we have a president who’s labeled Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists. He continues to signal a fear of brown people by insisting on building an unreasonable wall that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
The racist leading this country is someone to fear.