Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/08/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I see the point on the familiarity issue. OTOH, even if you know someone, if that person is in the grip of some kind of paranoid-schizo/manic/anxiety mental disorder to *this* degree, that person is VERY dangerous, both to themselves and to others. My uncle has severe mental problems, and this too is also something I know to be true up close and personal. I'm still very inclined to believe that a black man in the same situation would have been shot dead (an officer was actually wounded, which just ups the stakes). Scott Matt Powell wrote: > On 8/9/06, B. D. Colen <bd@bdcolenphoto.com> wrote: > >> Right...allow me to leap to conclusion - white guy who all the cops know >> isn't shot; black guy who they didn't, under precisely same >> circumstances, >> would have been so filled with lead the EPA would have declared him a >> Super >> Fund site. Am I right, or have I leapt to a Harvardian Knee Jerk Liberal >> Yankee Conclusion? > > > I think you're mostly right, but in this case it rests less on race, > but on familiarity. It's a natural assumption for the cops to make > that they can predict the behavior of a known quantity better than > they can a stranger, making lethal force less necessary. > -- Pics @ http://www.adrenaline.com/snaps Leica M6TTL, Bessa R, Nikon FM3a, Nikon D70, Rollei AFM35 (Jihad Sigint NSA FBI Patriot Act)