Sunday, June 28, 2015

Police Killed An Unarmed White Man In Iowa And His Community Didn't Seem To Notice


Looks like the white folks in Iowa were not upset about having a criminal nuisance removed from their midst. Imagine that!

So how do white people in Iowa respond when police kill a white person under questionable circumstances in a heavily white neighborhood? If Des Moines is any example, they don't: A single protester showed up outside the police press conference on Wednesday, according to the Register. There was no wall-to-wall media coverage of large-scale demonstrations, because there were no demonstrations to cover.
The city's apparent apathy is about more than racial demographics. Iowa generally has little experience with fatal police shootings. Bolinger is only the third person killed by police in the state in 2015, according to The Guardian. One was an armed robbery suspect killed after allegedly pointing a gun at police following a car chase. The other was a woman reportedly killed by an errant bullet fired by an officer who slipped while attempting to shoot a dog that had jumped on him. Both were white. (For comparison, the Los Angeles Police Department alone has killed more than three times Iowa's total so far this year, which speaks to longstanding concerns about the LAPD's use of force.)

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