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Family and friends of Justine Damond gathered for a vigil in Sydney, Australia, on July 19. Damond died after being shot by Minneapolis police.

In life, Justine Damond was a yoga instructor. In death, she is a Rorschach test.

Earlier this month, Minneapolis police responded to Damonds emergency call about a possible sexual assault and ended up killing her. To a lawyer representing her family, she is the most innocent victim of any police shooting he has ever seen. In Damonds native Australia, politicians and citizens see her fate as further proof of American lawlessness so unchecked that even the police are as much predators as protectors.

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Right-wing media highlight the accused officers ethnicity he is a Somali-American and proclaim him an emblem of the failings of political correctness. And for those who have watched the killings of people of color treated with indifference and victim-blaming excuses, Damonds death reinforces what they already knew that a white woman will be afforded compassion, a presumption of virtue, and official recourse that no black or brown man, woman, or child killed by a police officer would ever receive.

Yet lost in this maelstrom is any meaningful discussion of how yet another person who called 911 ended up getting shot to death by a police officer who was initially sent to help.

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On Wednesday, as the controversy over Damonds death spiraled, acting Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo ordered all officers to activate their body cameras in response to every traffic stop, call, or self-initiated response. When Damond was killed, both officers Mohamed Noor, who fired the fatal shot, and Matthew Harrity had their body cams turned off. Harrity said he and Noor were startled by a loud sound just before Noor shot Damond.

Choosing to obey a police officer is never a guarantee that a person of color wont still be shot dead by a cop.

While concrete changes after police shootings usually occur at a glacial pace, if at all, this is the second major departmental shift since Damonds death. Less than a week after the killing, Police Chief Jane Harteau resigned, and Mayor Betsy Hodges said in a statement, she had lost confidence in the Chiefs ability to lead us further.

Hodges suffered no such loss of confidence in Harteau after police shot Jamar Clark, an African-American man, to death in November 2015. Neither officer involved in Clarks killing was indicted.

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Its too early to know if Noor will be charged in Damonds death, but one thing is already clear: He isnt receiving the kind of lavish support conservatives usually bestow on police officers. Thats because this police shooting calls forth an ancient but omnipresent white American fear the killing of a white woman by a black man.

Fox News, which rarely questions the actions of police officers, referred to Noor as an Somali immigrant cop. For no obvious reason, the same story mentioned that the Noor spoke Somali at home, as if thats a clue into what happened the night Damond died. This is the same channel that tried to make Trayvon Martins hoodie as complicit in his own killing as shooter George Zimmerman.

Other right-wing outlets hoping to inflame already agitated emotions about immigration and Islam call Noor a Muslim cop. Former Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann branded the officer, the precincts first Somali-American, as an affirmative-action hire and cryptically wondered if Damond was killed for cultural reasons. Whatever that means. Even Noors police union has been relatively quiet, instead of defending a fellow officer.

As the investigation into Damonds death continues, its international multi-story narrative has almost overgrown the initial incident.

Of course, there was far less widespread attention a month earlier when Seattle police shot to death Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother of four struggling with mental health issues, after she reported a burglary. Or the case of Ismael Lopez in Mississippi, shot dead last Sunday by police who mistakenly went to his home to serve a warrant meant for his neighbor.

Yet the best we can get are cursory conversations about improving police training. Last year police killed more than 950 people. Whether or not juries recognize it, not every shooting is justified. Systemic failings in police training nationwide create antagonistic community relationships in which citizens fear police and police arrive expecting the worst and respond with lethal force as the only option.

Damonds death is a tragedy, but no more so than that of anyone else inexplicably killed by police. The only difference is that Damond was a white woman. Beyond that, were left with the same vexing questions, but already know this much is true: Innocent citizens of every race and gender will continue to die because, when police officers are trained to be hammers, everything around them looks like a nail.

See the article here:
A nation of nails, policed by hammers - The Boston Globe