Automatic Prejudice In Tamir's Case Study

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A popular story that has recently been in the news is the fatal shooting of 12-year old, African American Tamir Rice. In 2014, Cleveland police got a call that an African American male was at a nearby park waving something around that looked like a gun. The caller reported to the dispatcher that it could be a kid. When relaying the information over to police, the dispatcher failed to mention that the suspect was possibly a kid. When police arrived at the scene they ended up killing the little boy almost immediately after encountering him. What the police assumed was a real gun, happened to be a pretend gun. The shooting of Tamir sent the country and African American community into complete outrage. African Americans were upset because countless innocent people continue to get killed by police officers. Fast forward to today, the city of Cleveland has granted the family of Tamir a settlement for six million dollars (htt). This is said to be the largest settlement in police related lawsuit history, although the city does not admit to any wrongdoing …show more content…

African Americans in particular are victims of automatic prejudice the most. I think this was the case in Tamir’s case. As the text states, automatic, implicit prejudice can have life or death consequences in some situations (Myers, 2015, p. 249). In Payne’s study, a gun was quickly recognized and tools were mistaken for guns when associated with African American faces (Myers, 2015, p. 249). A number of things may have caused the behavior of the responding officers. Automatic attitudes are believed to be impulsive and uncontrolled reactions to target ethnic and racial groups (Judd, Blair, & Chapleau, 2004). In order police officers need to detect the presence of a weapon and not just the presence of a negative stimulus to determine whether their lives are in danger (Judd, Blair, & Chapleau,