Fear is behind recent events

With the many shootings of black people, I have come to ask the question of how fear plays a role in each incident. There are many kinds of fear and everyone reacts differently. It is bad enough that many people prejudge all blacks to be a problem and a threat but when coupled with someone who cannot manage their fear to respond in an acceptable manner, it is a predictable outcome.

How will each person’s fear affect their job? Obviously, no test can predict with certainty how a person will respond under real duress, but perhaps there is such a need for officers that warning signs are ignored in an attempt to fill vacancies. It is obvious that many officers are quick to pull the trigger and then cry “I feared for my life.” This has become a disturbing pattern in so many cases. Nobody should have to die in a traffic stop, and if an officer is too afraid of being hurt, it is a recipe for disaster.

This can also be said of many blacks who are stopped and are already scared to death of police and make mistakes which lead to unnecessary deaths. Police management wants their officers to be allowed to make mistakes and learn from them, but these officers with too great a fear are murdering people unnecessarily. When will they learn that most of the people they stop are not criminals and quit trying to make everyone they stop into a criminal?

This story was originally published October 6, 2016 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Fear is behind recent events."