Interesting perspective. In UK, FYI, police ony need to be called to an accident if there has been injury. Otherwise, swap details and go on your way/call your tow-truck.
When I had an accident in US (donkey’s years ago) I would have done the same but the fuckwit who hit me was at least helpful in advising me that the police would seek me out and destroy me if I left the scene of the accident during the two-plus hours it took to simply get the police there and fill out forms, etc. Watching a rookie cop look at a UK driver’s licence (paper version, no ID) like it was from Mars, was slight entertainment that wore off after the third time he unfolded it and folded it back up again.
So the assumption of police involvement is a more national/cultural thing, perhaps, than a universal thing. But then, we have nominally unarmed police here, too.
That said I cannot imagine anyone calling the cops here (or there, really) because a door was open. Either go and look yourself or ignore it. I guess in a society so heavily armed, going and looking yourself has lost its appeal as the civil course of action.
If they edited the body cam footage, I’m not sure what they edited, because it was pretty damning. You can clearly tell they never identified themselves, and fired shots immediately upon telling the woman to raise her hands. So if that’s edited to cover something up, they did a pretty shit job.
I am taking some cold comfort in seeing the news media are reporting this as it needs to be reported. White cop, black victim, killed in her own home. The press have been covering for these pigs for far too long.
In my neighborhood (and many others), cops are insistent that we should call the police for any and every reason.
See someone unfamiliar on your street? Call 911.
Can’t remember if that van should be parked in front of that house? Call 911.
Just feel weird about a situation and can’t place why? Trust your instincts and call 911.
They do this for two reasons:
The doctrine of community policing says that cops should insert themselves into all aspects of community life, so that contact with the police is constant and the police are seen as the solution to any problem. The result is that supporting the community and supporting the police are equated, which shields them from criticism and accountability.
The more people call the cops, the more money police departments are allocated. In many places it’s the key metric that police departments use when asking for budget increases. They want you to call 911 because every time you do it’s basically a vote for more cops with more gear.
Presumably the call was something along the lines of “I think there is a burglar in the house, and I think I still see movement in there.” The cop gets a call about a burglary in progress and makes the wrong assumption about the person he finds inside.
Hell, he might have been thinking “catching a petty burglar and they’ll be out of jail in a couple of months, but I can solve this problem once and for all.” He might have been Judge Dredding the situation. This is all speculation though, there’s not enough publicly available evidence to really say one way or the other.
Per the various news stories I’ve read, the neighbor (also a POC) saw his neighbor’s door open at 2 am, and called the police for a routine ‘wellness check.’
There is ample evidence to refute your speculations. The police visit was classed as a welfare check. The caller was careful not to dial 911, he instead looked up and dialed the non-emergency number. It was the policeman’s state of mind that set this murder in motion, not the initial phone call.
I’m trying to understand his state of mind. I don’t think he got up in the morning thinking “today is a good day to shoot some darkies for the good of my race.” In real life people aren’t cartoon villains most of the time. Somewhere along the way he seems to have gotten the impression that he was going to be apprehending a dangerous criminal and approached the situation with completely the wrong mindset.
Police training, day in and day out teaches cops that every single interaction is inherently a life or death situation. It is always shoot or be shot in a cop’s mibd because that’s the doctrine they’re trained in.
Fort worth is right next to Dallas, where we just saw another white cop convicted of killing a black person in their own home. The jaw-dropping incompetence necessary to make those choices… does not speak to a very high level of crime fighting ability. The Simpson’s policeman character of Barney Fife comes to mind.
Hanlon’s razor applies here just as well as anywhere else. The police are simply not being held to a very high standard of performance. Its ambient racism that ensures people of color will bear the brunt of this shoddy police work.
It really boils down to the pervasive and pernicious militarization of police forces across the US. Police officers are taught to believe that they are the first and most important line of defense against terrorism and anarchy. Everyone they encounter is a suspected terrorist until proven innocent. Supplying cops with billions in military style arms and equipment only reinforces this concept.
That was Dallas, the next city over. They have a common border. But they are very different cities in their attitudes, values, etc. Fort Worth is generally more laid back, less about glitz, money, what car you drive etc. But it is also more ‘wild west’ than Dallas. The Fort Worth phrase you see all over the place is “Fort Worth - where the west begins”
The officer, responding to a call from a neighbor concerned about an open door,
The BBC report that the BB story linked to, says (my bold).
A black woman was shot dead by police through her own bedroom window in the early hours of Saturday morning, after a request to check on her welfare. >
Atatiana Jefferson, 28, had been living at the residence in Fort Worth, Texas with her eight-year-old nephew.
A neighbour had called a non-emergency police number after growing concerned that her front door was open at night.
