POLICE AND ITCHY FINGERS
Police are no different than all people. They think, firstly about themselves and their own safety. A black man Andrew Loku, who came from the Sudan and who suffered to some extent with mental illness, was shot dead in Toronto carrying a wooden hammer. This incident created a shock as it came within a year of the death of Mike Brown in Ferguson Mo. and Eric Garner in New York, all black men, as well as others. Our society has three issues to address. I believe, in order of importance they are, police interactions with the mentally ill, racism of North American police forces and the fact that too often people are killed by police before they adequately assess the situation at hand. Before going into the details of intricacies of the police answering distress calls, one important factor is common for all. The people taking the call MUST take down the details surrounding the event so that the arriving police forces have answered the distress signal with the staff best prepared to be successful. By that I mean, is the call about the person armed, what type of weapon, is the person carrying, how strong are they, male or female, where is the event taking place and is the police force in danger when they arrive. It is not up to the person calling to give the information, but the police station taking the calls to ask.
One in five people in Australia are mentally ill. There is no reason to believe that the figures would differ in North America or for that matter anywhere in the world. When the call is taken the first question to ask is the person mentally stable. In some cases if a relative or friend is calling,that information is readily available. If the answer is affirmative there are probably officers available who are experienced in these situations.. Possibly an officer who has taken training. Mentally sick people must be treated differently and very dangerous situations can be averted .
I do not believe that overt racism is a major factor in killings by police. Approximately 12-15 % of the U.S. population is black but they represent 40% of the jailed people. Blacks are jailed 6x more frequently than whites. When blacks are killed in most cases the perpetrator of the crime is another black. I believe that police are more afraid for their safety in encountering blacks and rather than racism it is plain old fear. According to the bureau of Justice statistics 2805 black males over the age of 18, out of every 100,000 in the American national population, were imprisoned in a federal or state facility in 2013. Measured the same way, comparable numbers for Hispanic and non-Hispanic white males were 1,134 and 466, respectively. While it is natural to be afraid when one is hired as a police person, it comes with the territory. Do not be more aggressive when encountering a black suspect. Statistics show that 31.6% of blacks killed were unarmed and 16.5% of whites people were unarmed.
I have stressed the main problem in these encounters is lack of information. Police should give every person they encounter the benefit of the doubt and not take lethal steps unless absolutely necessary. In most cases the police outnumber whomever they encounter.
