Only White Police Officers Get Away With Murder

As if we need any more evidence that white police officers alone get away with shooting and killing unarmed people of color. In South Carolina, former police officer Justin Craven has just been given three years of probation and no jail time for killing 68 year old African-American Ernest Satterwhite.

Officer Craven was following Mr. Satterwhite, who was driving while intoxicated, weaving on the road and hitting parked cars. When the driver finally stopped in his own driveway, according to the police dashcam, Craven rushed to the drivers side door and pointed his gun through the window. Mr. Satterwhite's arm can be seen pushing the officer away. That's when Craven shot multiple times into the car. He was pronounced dead at the scene. No weapons were found in the car. His blood alcohol level was 0.15.

When prosecutors tried to charge him with voluntary manslaughter with a sentence of 2 to 30 years, the grand jury, despite the video evidence, refused to indict him. They did charge him with a lesser felony that carried a sentence of 10 years. Eventually the prosecutor settled for a misdemeanor misconduct in office charge that carries no jail time.

So this officer willfully ran up to the driver's side window of the victim and fired point blank into the car killing the driver. Contrast that with New York Police Officer Peter Liang who was convicted of manslaughter for ACCIDENTALLY firing his gun into a darkened stairwell. The bullet somehow ricocheted over multiple surfaces and angles, striking Akai Gurley in the heart TWO floors below. True Officer Liang did not render aid immediately upon finding his mistake. But neither did Officer Craven.

Is it any wonder Asians all over the country were protesting what they justifiably felt was the punitive justice heaped upon Officer Liang but not on any other police officers accused of killing a minority? Though it's wrong to wish Officer Liang had gotten away with murder, like all the other policemen, neither is it right that he was the only one convicted while officers such as Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo were not even indicted by a grand jury. There can be no post-racial society in America until there is post-racial justice in America.