A special fear haunts police officers of color across the United States. Beyond all the dangers that every law enforcement officer faces, these officers feel uniquely threatened by another. It is the danger that a day will come when they are out of uniform—off-duty, undercover, or in plainclothes—and the color of their skin and a gun in their hand will prompt fellow officers to mistake them for an armed criminal, and shoot. When an officer of color is not in uniform and sees a crime in progress or a life threatened, and considers taking police action, he or she must often think twice about how the next police officers on the scene will react to an unfamiliar black or Latino with a gun. .The study was done after two off-duty black cops in New York were gunned down by other cops.
The "off-duty" part is the key. If the cops were on-duty, there might have been some mechanism to let the other cops know that plainclothes police were on the scene.
"Off-duty" shouldn't be the key, but "without uniform".
ReplyDeleteMany cops work without a uniform to better blend in, and this problem should apply to such situations as well.
But plainclothes cops may have a "color of the day" to signal to the uniformed cops that they might be about to shoot a fellow officer. Or the unis may have been informed of an operation within their patrol area.
ReplyDelete"Off-duty" brings in cops that may be from different precincts, areas or departments. So yes, it has even more danger.