Why is it so hard for whites to appreciate that there is an obvious reason why most victims of excessive police force including most of those victims who were killed even though they were not threatening the officer's life are black and brown? Sadly, there is one answer that

2]has nothing to do with adequate police training: the vast majority of police officers[sadly, including many minority officers] fear black/brown "offenders" far more than white "offenders". Some cops acknowledge such greater fear, others vigorously deny it but the bottom line

3]remains the same. Before I became a Public Defender, I had the opportunity to sit in a patrol car with my uncle who was a street cop who worked both in affluent white suburbs outside Boston as well as predominantly black or hispanic communities in Roxbury and Jamaica Plains in

4] the early 70's. My presence in his car during an active police patrol violated several police regulations but my uncle wanted to teach me about the "risks of street life" before I started to defend the very people he arrested. I immediately noticed how my uncle's behavior

5]and emotions were very different when he was stopping a white vs a black person. In the former cases, he appeared intent on de-escalating the situation. In the latter, he acted in a far more aggressive self protective manner where his primary goal was not deescalation but

6]domination and control over the minority suspect. When I asked him after these encounters had ended why he didn't appear to consider or use deescalation tactics with minority suspects, his answer was revealing."Peter, with most black suspects, de escalation can only occur after

7] you demonstrate you are in control of the encounter." Of course, the obvious follow up question was why "control of the encounter" was not the first step in dealing with white suspects. The answer: he didn't start from a position of fear with most white suspects. Was he aware

8]of this bias? I doubt it. No amount of excellent police training about deescalation goals will change police conduct until this fear is not part of the racial equation.