In an incident bearing an eerie resemblance to the shooting of Samuel DuBose, 19-year-old Zachary Hammond of Seneca, SC was fatally shot, apparently in the back, in his car by a police officer last Sunday. He was stopped as part of a drug (cannabis) sting aimed at his girlfriend. Nobody in the car was armed.
Hammond was white, and this recent column by Leonard Pitts, Jr. is apropos. Although the disproportionate brunt of police violence falls on people of color, that's part of a much larger problem. As Pitts's friend quoted in the article points out, thinking about out-of-control police violence solely in terms of race makes it smaller than it really is. We're all in this one together.