The Other McCain points to how lazy reporters have turned every police officer shoots black man into the headline "Family Demands Answers" instead of asking questions:
Am I asserting that, in each of these cases, the police were entirely justified, and that all these complaints are illegitimate? No, of course not. One must examine each case in detail to determine whether or not police procedures were proper and lawful. My point is not about police procedures, but rather about the lazy cookie-cutter approach to journalism that yields such a predictable series of headlines. And, in case you’d care to click those headline links, you will discover that in every case, the person shot by police is black. We know, as a matter of statistical fact, that cops actually shoot more white suspects than black suspects, but when did you ever see a news story about a white family “demanding answers” in such a case? I can only think of one off the top of my head — a crazy woman in Tennessee who charged cops with a pickax — but I’m sure there must be others. In general, when a white person does something that causes cops to shoot them, most white people are like, “OK, we can understand that.” There’s no protest, no angry rhetoric about “injustice” or “oppression,” no white people looting Target.
Whatever their race, people who get killed by cops don’t become victims at random. In almost every case, there was a reason this person died in a hail of gunfire — they did something, and whether or not they were a criminal menace to society, their death was legally justified.
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