[White] Privilege has its benefits

One of those benefits is that you can be a camouflage wearing, air-gun toting, 13-year-old white male with a real gun holster and a real tactical knife, and you get to stay alive following an encounter with the police:

Officer Jason Shreves, a 10-year police veteran who spent five years on patrol in West Baltimore, was responding when he was flagged by a frantic woman in an SUV. Hurry, she said. There’s a man with a gun.

“This is about to get real,” Officer Shreves remembers thinking.

He turned a corner and saw someone dressed all in black and camouflage, carrying what looked like an AR-15 assault rife. He was wearing a ski mask and a holster with what looked like a hand gun in it.

“Drop the gun and get on the ground,” he shouted. He’d drawn his service weapon, a .40-caliber semi-automatic.

The suspect obeyed and was handcuffed.

But when the police officer took off the ski mask, he saw the frightened face of a 13-year-old boy. The teen had apparently been strutting around the neighborhood with all his Christmas stuff, an Airsoft rifle and an Airsoft pistol, both of which shoot plastic pellets.

And nobody died.

Nobody died because Officer Shreves gave the teen a chance to comply with his orders, rather than shooting him 2 seconds after exiting his police car. It’s a shame Tamir Rice didn’t get that same benefit. It’s almost as if white people are treated differently in the United States or something.

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[White] Privilege has its benefits
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