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I Was No Angel Either
He was no angel. You’ll hear it said pretty much every time a person of color is killed by law enforcement.
Even if they weren’t attacking the officer at the time or posing a direct threat. Even if they weren’t armed. Even if, as with Walter Scott, they were running away from the officer and shot in the back.
In the case of a child like Tamir Rice, it will be said about his parents, as if to suggest that some minor prior scrapes with the law would explain why their son might be playing with a toy gun in a park, and end up shot by a cop who had not the inclination to discern the difference between that toy and an actual weapon.
He was no angel, or she wasn’t — since women of color are also disproportionately killed by police — is something of a modern-day mantra for the reflexive defenders of law enforcement.
It’s what they say to rationalize away every shooting, to justify choking out Eric Garner on the streets of Staten Island for supposedly selling loose cigarettes and then talking back to the cops when they harassed him about it.
If you don’t comply with police to their satisfaction, they say, then death is your deserved fate. If you break the law, the very real possibility of summary…
