Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

The podcast I chose to listen to was an episode from The Frontline Dispatch titled “I Don’t Want to Shoot You, Brother.” This was a very moving podcast that discussed police officers use of lethal force. In this case there was a 911 call in Weirton West Virginia, known to be one of the safest small cities in the area. A woman called frantically saying that her ex-boyfriend was at her house and he had a gun, however, she was sure to state that his gun had no clip in it, and that he was going to threaten the police with it so they would shoot him, he also said that he was going to shoot himself in front of her and their baby. Stephan Mader was the responding officer, who was a rookie white cop who had served with the marines. When he arrived and saw African American RJ Williams standing there with a gun, Mader had no idea the gun was not loaded. Mader ordered Williams to put the gun down multiple times, to which Williams simply responded, “just shoot me.”  Mader did not perceive Williams to be a threat and just wanted to get him to put the gun down. However, when 2 other officers arrived at the scene, they saw the scenario unfolding in front of them when Williams began waiving the gun and walking towards the officers. Williams was then shot and killed by one of the other officers that had just arrived. He shot 4 bullets with the last one landing in William’s head. After the incident the only issues the department saw was that Mader was negligent, not ending the threat, and putting the other officers at risk. In response to this, Mader was fired, for not killing Williams, an African American.

When exploring cases such as these, since there are far too many, obviously the key question is whether race was a factor in the outcome or not. There is a widespread acknowledgement that race matters when it comes to policing. “The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted the use of race in police decision making” (Hutchins, 2017). This is a worrisome statement in light of what is happening around the world today. In this case however it could be argued that Mader did not let race influence his decision when deciding whether or not to shoot Williams. It is not known but could be speculated that the arriving officer who did shoot and kill Williams may have been extra motivated to do so because of race. We talk about several cases in class where race is suspected to be a motivating factor in why these individuals were killed by police, cases including Tamir Rice and Eric Garner which received immense repercussions. This case only adds to the question of whether this is racially motivated police shooting or not, and still has no answers.

The podcast mentions that this is a classic case of suicide by cop, which I found to be interesting that they mentioned research has shown that a third or more of all police shootings could involve people trying to get the police to kill them. I think this is an important statistic, but it is a difficult thing to prove and study.

Mader filed a civil suit against the department but made clear he did not want to implicate the officer who did kill Williams in any way. In his opinion, neither of them were wrong and I completely agree. To the firing officer’s knowledge, he had no reason to believe that Williams gun was not loaded, and, in that case, he was justified in shooting the victim considering he had no backstory whatsoever on what was going on and just saw a man with a gun coming towards him and his fellow officers. In the same sense Mader was justified in not shooting Williams, because he did not perceive him to be a threat. If he had shot him when not perceiving him as a threat then that is completely wrong and he should have been terminated, but that was not the case. Mader won the settlement and received $175,000. I think it is important to understand and Ronald Wright brings this to light by saying “The police department itself trains officers in the use of force or arranges for its officers to get training and certification from regional statewide groups. The police department also declares and enforces its own policies on the use of force.” (Wright, 2017). It is mentioned how there are over 18,000 police departments in the US, and it is virtually impossible to ensure common, consistent, required training. Because of this departments have their own policies and procedures for how to deal with these situations. The important question raised while listening to this is how do you consistently and reliably train officers, just to shoot, not because they can, but to shoot only because they have to?

This podcast helped me see both sides to this story, and even though it is terribly tragic for everyone involved, it helps show how both of the officers discussed could have been justified in their actions. I think it is important to understand that cops have their own discretion so what happens in one case, cannot be said to happen in every case to come after it. At the end of the day in these situations it all comes down to whether or not the police officer views the suspect as a threat. There are many cases of police shootings where there seems to be virtually no reason why the cop would have felt to be in danger, and I believe those cops should be punished. The podcast mentions crisis intervention types of training, and I believe those could be very useful in some ways, but it is very difficult to train police officers for every possible situation that could happen, and I think many people do not understand that. I would recommend this podcast to others because it shares the story of a police officer that did make the right choice. This is a terrible case and a good cop got fired for not doing something he did not feel comfortable with. I think this podcast would help people realize that there are more cops out there like him, and we need them.

References

Hutchins’, R. (2017). Racial Profiling: The Law, the Policy, and the Practice. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Vintage Books.

Wright, R. (2017). Elected Prosecutors and Police Accountability. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Vintage Books.

Podcast Link: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/dispatch/i-dont-want-to-shoot-you-brother/

Anonymous