How Should The Murder Of Botham Jean Change The Use Of Deadly Force By Police?
For the past several days, I have been following closely the trial of Amber Guyger. Guyger formerly a Dallas, Texas police officer mistook a neighbor's apartment for her own. Believing the actual resident , 26 year old Botham Jean, was an intruder she entered the apartment and murdered him.
I've listened firsthand to the entire week of trial, including the defendant's own testimony. And from that comes one particularly disturbing fact of police procedure which I've recently written about on Quora.com and would like to also share with my fellow Steemians.
How Should The Murder Of Botham Jean Change The Use Of Deadly Force By Police?
Notably, Amber Guyger according to her own testimony was afraid of what she couldn’t see―Botham Jean’s hands.
This is completely in line her training. And it’s a problem.
Police officers are trained to perceive unseen hands as inherently dangerous. This is problematic because it puts the burden on the public to prove to officers that those around them are not a threat, instead of vice versa.
This more than anything I think is the practical lesson to be taken from the murder of Botham Jean. Even if Guyger had been in her own apartment Botham Jean―from all the evidence―was not armed, could not have been armed, could not have posed any immediate deadly threat.
Image courtesy Zhivko Dimitrov on Pixabay
But Amber Guyger, entirely because of her police training, convinced herself that he was a deadly threat―not based on what she saw, but on what she didn’t see.