You turn on the evening news, and the first thing you see is a “Breaking News” banner emblazoned across the screen, as a young reporter dramatically tells a heart-wrenching story of another white police officer shooting an African American suspect. The reporter spouts off statistics of law enforcement using lethal force, makes reference to the other non-lethal options officers have at their disposal, and then, gravely looking at you through the television screen, he asks the rhetorical question of how many more of these killings it will take before something is done about this unnecessary violence.
If you take this story at face value, then without waiting on the facts, you immediately start calling this a hate crime and demanding the officer be criminally charged, convicted and locked away, you are part of the problem.
