First of all, there have been so many police shootings of people in the past few years, especially of black men but that really isn’t the point of this article, that I didn’t find out anything about Sam Dubose until I was waiting for an interview yesterday morning and saw the information about the officer being charged with murder streaming on CNN. Throughout the course of the day I caught bits and pieces about the case and this early morning saw reports showing the mayor, the police chief and other people feeling grateful that the outcome, so far, has been correct. To me, it seems a lot of people are taking credit for the incitement and almost want to high five themselves for a job well done.

A lingering question people seem to have is this; how did a traffic stop escalate into a shooting? Honestly, it isn’t a lingering question. Like I said, I never heard of the incident until yesterday morning, and it has been over a week since it occurred. An answer as to how the traffic stop could have escalated as it did can be found in one simple place. I decided to dig back into online files to look at how the story was reported initially. What I came across was something that wasn’t objective.

One of the things that struck me in the news conference was when Sam Dubose sister talked about how the media painted her brother in a bad light. I’m sure a lot of people notice that when these cases occur, the first thing ‘law abiding’ people want to point out is if the person had only cooperated with the police, they wouldn’t have gotten hurt. They said this about Trayvon Martin all the way to Sandra Bland. They question is seldom asked why a person who resists arrest, if you want to interpret things that way, should end up dead. Another question never asked is why does a person’s possible history a justification for being shot. In many of the cases in the past few years, when people have been shot by police, in many cases before the public learns the name of the officers involved, the press will have a full history of the dead person, and that information is never put in a good light.

Just in the case of Sam Dubose, the public isn’t introduced to a man who was trying to provide for his family or a person who was a kind man. One of the first things learned about him was he had over 60 arrests and 13 kids. There was no context given to the arrests and the children; they were just put out there in the public as a stark fact. As you can imagine, some in the public don’t take kindly to people with a lot of arrests and kids, unless their last name is Duggard. He was stopped for driving without a front license plate so could it be possible all those arrests were for moving violations? Could it be that he was providing for his family and couldn’t it be possible all those kids are with the same person? It certainly could be, but don’t expect that to be the in the forefront of a good number of people in the public. Here are some of the posts made on a local news website, which was done a few days after the shooting.

thinker9 days ago
How does this man have 13 Kids? It makes you wonder how many baby mamas he has? I'm so confused by this.

Tracy Fryburger thinker9 days ago
Seems like he chose to take a lot of risks. He was 43, 75 arrests and 13 kids. How does one work to support that kind of responsibility?

meemaw two Guest9 days ago
I don't understand what his children have to do with him being dead???? Please explain your comment??? secondly its offensive to his family and friends who might, otherwise be on the wlwt website?? don't you think?? thinker??????

thinker meemaw two9 days ago
Well, the fact that he had 13 kids and 75 arrests it is my concern. Some and if not most of these kids are probably benefiting from Welfare, snap, energy subsidies, govt phones, wic, dental care, healthcare, sec 8 and the list goes on. Wake up people! People like this man are draining our society.

NGuy thinker9 days ago
and that would be a burden on society....i don't know how you can strive to feed the poor without curbing these irregularities. I'm no malthusian, but at least the Chinese have that part figured out
.

That’s a fraction of over 300 comments on one site, and many of the negative comments got double digit likes. Cases from Trayvon Martin to Sandra Bland show similar results from a significant segment of the population; the people that were shot or killed deserved to be shot and killed. They were a waste of taxpayer’s money, were a drain on the system and were troublemakers. People don’t see themselves in the faces of the shooting victims. They find a way to justify themselves out of the picture. In other words, they don’t see themselves being shot by the police because the police shoot ‘those people’ and that’s OK in their book.

There is a huge blame game that could be put on many of the cop shooting cases. You have the police themselves overreacting to non-threatening situations. The assumption being that the black person behind the wheel probably is a criminal or a criminal in the making and isn’t showing the right respect. You have the press who don’t see how doing a quick search and putting something out can be a disservice to the victim. If you essentially put up the criminal record of the victim without an investigation you further stigmatize the victim to the public. You have the public that would rather perpetuate stereotypes and not have a skeptical eye about the information given to them. This mixture causes the resentment and distrust many minorities feel about the police, press and the citizens.

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Sam Dubose Smeared before Justice - July 30, 2015
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