Why it's so rare for police to be prosecuted for killing civilians

Key Takeaways

after months of jury deliberations in the case of Officer Darren Wilson shooting teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri the grand jury has decided that Wilson should not be prosecuted for Brown's death a key element in that case as in all police shootings all cases involving Police use of force is whether the officer's decision about whether force was warranted was reasonable or not for an officer's deadly force to be legal he has to have believed that the target of the force was a threat to his own life or another innocent person or that the target was fleeing from a violent felony but the question isn't whether the person being shot actually was a threat the question is whether the officer thought he was a threat whether the officer's State of Mind at the time of the shooting was reasonable and whether that state of mind is enough to support the decision to shoot and officers will rely on this defense that in a split second they did the right thing they thought that they were in danger and they pulled the trigger and that it's not reasonable to question that and that's a really effective defense even if it turns out that they were wrong get your hands out now there are a couple of reasons for that people believe that police officers are credible another reason is that that citizens are more likely to perceive black people as criminals juries are made of citizens so that is an advantage for an officer whose legal defense is that he felt threatened by a black man the result is that police can and do kill and a disproportionate number of people killed by police are black in recent years young black men have been 21 times more likely to be shot by police than white teens are police have to use force in their jobs and they will sometimes have to make Split Second decision but over time cases of police officers making that decision wrong and shooting an unarmed person because they wrongly perceived them to be a threat keep happening these cases keep piling up it's time to re-evaluate when we allow police to use force and what the consequences should be when they get it wrong