Four police officers had just lynched a defenseless black man in their custody in public only a few weeks ago. I'm a white man. I don't hear about 1/100th of the cases of police maltreatment of blacks under police control, and even I know enough to know that the results of any encounter African Americans have with the police are uncertain, even if most times those fears don't materialize - that time.
The thing about fear is that it is destabilizing. Very few people remain cool calm and collected while experiencing a surge of fear. Throw some alcohol into the mix on top of that and sometimes people can act in a manner that, in hindsight, was not in their best interests. It is easy for me to sit here in the peace and safety of my home office and say that Rayshard made some poor decisions, and yes that's what I think. He had to make a snap judgement and he made one. Now he is dead, and he did not deserve to die.
Sitting here with my white privilege intact it seems obvious to me that it was very unlikely that those cops would have seriously harmed Rashard had he not resisted arrest. After all they had interacted with him in a non threatening manner for the half hour preceding that attempted arrest. You know what the key word in my last sentence is? It's the word "unlikely". Not inconceivable, not impossible, not unprecedented, just "unlikely." I repeat, just unlikely. But yes literally conceivable, yes literally possible, and absolutely with strong precedent that Rayshard might have suffered serious harm had he not resisted arrest. That is the type of chilling reality that someone like me doesn't have to give much thought to, but Rayshard had to.
Maybe if he were cold hard sober he would have calculated the odds differently, and surrendered himself into police custody. Maybe had George Floyd not been lynched by the police while in their custody three weeks prior Rayshard would have calculated the odds differently and not resisted that arrest. Maybe this, maybe that, but the fear he felt was real and his reasons for feeling that fear were real. Black tombstones prove it.
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