We’ve all heard the mantra before: “police have to make split second decisions.” They certainly do. Which is why it is all the more crucial for whatever implicit biases cops may have—such as assuming black men are never victims but only dangerous predators (whether armed or not) and seeing black children as older than they are—to be either rooted out or tempered.
In Indianapolis on Tuesday, police shot and wounded an armed black homeowner who called them to report a robbery:
Officers were called shortly after 4:30 a.m. to a robbery call at a home in the Warren Woods neighborhood … the homeowner opened his garage door when officers arrived, and they found him standing inside armed with a gun.
Police shot the man at least once in the midsection, believing he was the robbery suspect. They soon realized their error, after initially reporting the suspect had been shot, and the man remains in serious condition at an area hospital.
Police learned the homeowner’s wife had arrived home from a work a short time earlier and was held up at gunpoint by a robber who then took her car keys. The robber was unable to start the car and then fled on foot, but not before the couple reported the attempted carjacking.
In New Jersey, police—with guns drawn—who were chasing a robbery suspect ended up chasing a 10-year-old black boy whose basketball went into the street.
Legend Preston had been playing with a basketball that rolled into the street near his home in Newark, and he chased after it … police officers approached with their weapons drawn, and the husky fifth-grader thought they were after him for going into the street — so the boy fled in terror.
“I ran because they thought that I rolled the ball into the street on purpose, and they were just holding shot guns at me trying to shoot me,” Legend said. Newark police said the officers did have their guns drawn but insisted they never pointed their weapons at the boy as they pursued him into an alley.
Witnesses intervened at that point and told police the person they had detained was a child. “He’s only 10 years old, how you all chasing him? He’s only a kid. I’m like, that’s messed up,” said neighbor Jackie Kelly.
The suspect the Newark police were looking for was 20 years old, with dreadlocked hair, by the way.
Merriam-Webster defines mistake as “to blunder in the choice of; to misunderstand the meaning or intention of; to identify wrongly.” Merriam-Webster also defines honest (i.e. an “honest mistake”) as “free from fraud or deception; legitimate, truthful; genuine, real; humble, plain; with all sincerity.” When it comes to law enforcement behavior in the United States, particularly in regards to African Americans, we cannot conclusively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, definitively and confidently say that “honest mistakes” have not been made. What we can do, though, is continue to look at each case with a healthy, heaping dose of side eye.