Quote:
Originally Posted by StealthMode
Are you saying Wilson was considering what would happen if he fell unconscious and Brown got his gun? If high adrenaline and the heat of the situation kept Wilson from even thinking where he was going to aim to shoot, then it stands to reason he wasn't playing out possible situations in his head either.
Also, to what's in bold, officers are supposedly trained to assess and react in a calculated manner so they don't respond solely on "survival instinct." I know it's a difficult situation with an impossible amount of pressure but I would still expect the average person to completely lose their cool and shoot at whatever they can before I expect a highly trained officer to do the same. By this reasoning, Wilson may not have reacted according to a racial bias but still did not react as well as he could have.
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No, I don't think Wilson was considering any of that. I think the situation escalated very quickly and he simply reacted- Man tried to overpower him and take his gun, then ran, then started to come back toward him. Survival instinct. I've never been under the impression that officers are trained to do anything but survive. I suspect there was probably racial bias but we can't assess that in isolation because of Brown's actions. We can't know if the reaction would have been the same if Brown was not African American. There's no way to figure that out and separate the bias from the actual events.
I will admit from accounts I'd read and from pictures I'd seen, the size discrepancy is not as significant as I originally thought. Even so, an 80 pound difference is a big weight difference. Their heights are apparently the same.