It’s very interesting to me that since about the last three or four years, ever since the situation involving Trayvon Martin, the national consciousness has been thinking about police shootings and thinking about why they happen.
And it’s been very interesting for me because I’ve been kind of obsessing over these topics for the last 25 years that I’ve been working here. But specifically I think that I want to focus on one aspect today of this phenomenon that most people have asked me about. And just by way of history, following the death of Trayvon Martin and some of the other high profile shootings that happen throughout our nation, there was a movement that was called Black Lives Matter.
And the movement of Black Lives Matter has essentially been coordinated to raise the public awareness as to the phenomenon of officer involved shootings, and the fact that many of the victims of officer involved shootings are men of color, specifically African American men. But the more interesting question to me is why does this happen, and what is about the particular dynamics of an officer involved shooting that result in such a high incidence of people of color, specifically African American men, who are shot often times while unarmed, by law enforcement.