How curious that an American minority now demands to be racially profiled by police to determine that one of theirs is somehow racially identifiable as a harmless wood carver, rather than a potentially deadly assailant with a knife who refuses police demands to disarm himself.
Apparently police are also to deduce from this new required racial profiling that the knife bearing man is a likable, partially deaf, homeless alcoholic, and that his knife (a serrated-edge device with a thumb-flip blade) is, racially speaking, not a dangerous weapon.
Leaving aside why those traits could – or should – be reasonably assumed from someone’s race, would it not be of more benefit if the outraged advocacy groups demanding this racial profiling took it upon themselves to proactively train the afflicted among their street people to clear their hands when required by police in the line of duty? Might it not be more advantageous to all concerned to regularly counsel, publish and pass on the risk of appearing to be dangerous to armed public servants who must make their living every day by handling the dangerous?
I am a 65-year-old, conventional looking, white male, retired police officer now an author. I’m about as threatening as the AFLAC duck. But I still keep my hands empty and in sight if approached by police, because I know it is an unreasonable expectation that cops recognize by my appearance that I’m harmless. Shouldn’t we who profess regard for the possibly slow among us attempt to make them conscious of this double-edged risk?
-William Slusher
Okanogan, Wash.