The Cop Who Told Me He Wished He’d Shot a Black Man
The officer could have learned that deadly force was seldom necessary. Instead, he regretted his choice.
In his forthcoming book Why Didn’t We Riot?, journalist and professor Issac J. Bailey interrogates what it means to be Black in “Trumpland”: those parts of the country “where white people overwhelmingly support Trump in spite of — or maybe because of — his open bigotry and racism,” he writes. “Black people everywhere face the struggle that is race and racism… But in Trumpland, it is different. It is harder to escape.” What follows is an excerpt about interacting with a white police officer.
As a white cop told me he had regretted not shooting a Black man in the head, I nodded along, trying to better understand his point of view, to empathize with him just a little more. I didn’t scream. I didn’t feel an urge to punch him in the mouth or shake him. I just sat there, nodding along as though I was listening to the tall tales of a friend I hadn’t seen in years but had long admired.
He told me how he had initiated what he believed would be a routine traffic stop somewhere near Charlotte, North Carolina. He told me how after approaching the car and noticing a few things that made him suspicious, he began thinking of ways of stalling until…
