It still amazes me that the preferred defense for police now-a-days is "I was scared. And so I did something very stupid and killed an innocent person." Being scared is entirely understandable. Hell- anyone would be! But the key, the central requirement of the job is that even though the officer will undoubtably at times be scared they must not allow that fear to cause them to do extraordinarily dangerous stuff or kill innocent people. That is why we try to be very selective in recruiting and retaining police officers, and why proper training is so important.
This is not a coincidence, but rather quite literally the legal standard for officer shootings, as ruled by the Supreme Court of the US in
Tennessee vs. Garner. If the officer has an "objectively reasonable" fear, he is legally permitted to shoot and kill.
This is how the cop that killed Philando Castile was allowed to walk free, despite the fact that he was very clearly in a state of total panic.
Combine this defense with three things: first, "warrior policing", or the idea that police must deal with deadly enemies that blend into the population, and their first priority isn't to "protect and serve", but rather to make it home safe at the end of their shift, and if someone else is killed then too bad. Second, The US' long history of dehumanizing non-white people - whether the "wetback", or more importantly, the "brute" stereotype of black men (now more commonly referred to as the "thug") and the "savage" stereotype of Native Americans (who are
more likely to be abused by police than black people, though this rarely receives much media attention - see the DAPL protests for a perfect example of this). And third, our atrocious handling of people with mental illnesses.
Remember right at the start of all this the BLM activists came out in support of the victim because they saw it as all part of the same thing and they were right, the problem is 'shoot first' training that emphasizes that Black people are inherently violent.
That said there are people now trotting out the 'He killed a white woman' card.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/aust...oman-thats-why-hes-here/ar-BBKx5uk?li=AAgfYrC
And there's also the famous example of the guy in Arizona who was killed for "Failure to Hokey Pokey". This is all predictable, and in fact very easy to predict, because all of the key players are perfectly honest about what they'll do, and why. I keep saying that, ultimately, I wasn't surprised at all to discover that four cops chose not to intervene during the Parkland shooting because police across the country told us exactly what their motivation is. Even if it's only 1 in 4 cops like that, it's just a matter of time until you get four of them at a massacre who all have the same attitude.
But the fact is, there aren't any real stereotypes about the savage rapine Aussie white women. There are plenty of negative stereotypes about immigrants, muslims, and black people, as we've seen almost incessantly over the years. So really, I agree that he's in jail because he's a Muslim black immigrant who shot a white woman. Reverse the two, and people will run to donate money to make sure that the white woman cop is well-protected, and will insist against all evidence that the victim is a "thug", "terrorist", and so on.
You can argue that this
shouldn't play a role in any case - but not really that it
doesn't. And similarly, I'm not saying that this guy shouldn't be in jail - but I will argue that there are quite a few police that shot black/Native/mentally ill people who should also be (well, police, and one abusive wannabe vigilante in Sanford FL...). We'll see if the prosecution decides to a good job this time, or if they throw the case yet again - I'm not quite certain what to expect in this case, for the reasons I already gave.
