In the days after the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Tyre King, activists and mourning community members are filled with confusion and looking for answers. At a press conference held yesterday, city officials asked for patience and peace while they find them.
Nine-year police veteran Bryan Mason shot King on Wednesday night after a “confrontation” following an armed robbery east of Downtown. Police responded to a 911 call that night and started tracking several teens involved in the incident. Officials said Mason saw King pull a gun out of his waistband before using deadly force. It was later determined the gun was a realistic BB gun.
“Our officers carry a gun that looks practically identical to this weapon,” said Kim Jacobs, Chief of Police. “It turns out not to be a firearm in the sense that it fires real bullets, but, as you can see, it looks like a firearm that could kill you.”
Both circumstantial and hard evidence are lacking as officers gather information. But the often racially-divided discussion of police brutality is not waiting. Fatal shootings that involve a white cop (which Mason is) and a person of color (which Tyre was) are immediately of public concern, placed under the microscope.
Community members aren’t sure why police pursued suspects in what was reported as a $10 robbery. A Facebook post shared by Black Lives Matter Columbus and originally written by Kelly Greenzalis, a tutor who’d worked with King, aimed to put an identity behind the suspect.
“Tyre was barely over five feet tall but had the biggest contagious smile and great dance moves,” she said.
And later, “Last night around 8 p.m., my funny and bright student Tyre was murdered by the police. I encourage you to look up the reports, but in short, he was shot multiple times while carrying a toy BB gun. Whether or not the police had the right to shoot, no child should have to die this way.”
Greenzalis pointed to a systemic problem of racism, an idea yet to fully resonate with the general public. The Kirwan Institute at OSU got a jump on related research, though. In their 2016 study of implicit bias — coinciding with the report with the Women’s Fund on gender norms and biases — they found racism to be systemic, and that unconscious racist beliefs impact a person’s moment-to-moment decisions and treatment of others. It manifests in every area of life: health, employment, education, housing, criminal justice, etc.
The report found that these biases follow police officers into the field.
“Extensive research has been devoted to the concept of ‘shooter bias,’ which refers to how implicit associations related to Blackness and weapons in the U.S. context can affect the speed and accuracy of shooting decisions,” the report states.
The report cites research pointing to a “shooter culture” resulting from White fear, which stems from “implicit associations between Black individuals and criminality.”
The study also found that the simple characteristic of openness to different perspectives could predict less racially motivated shooting decisions. How exactly to build implementable policy based on that is unclear.
For now city officials, including Mayor Andrew Ginther and Director of the Columbus Department of Public Safety Ned Pettus, ask people to respect the investigative process. Jacobs walked listeners through the next few steps as the case is investigated. It starts with detectives gathering evidence.
It’s long been called into question the propriety of a police department investigating its own officer. Ginther and Pettus tried to settle any unease by committing to openness and transparency, a standard adhered to more now as government programs are created to address police and community relations.
On the agenda are more community meetings as the investigation plays out. Next Wednesday Councilmember Mitchell J Brown, also present at the press conference, and Council President Zach Klein will hold a public hearing to discuss body camera policy.
Questions were raised about body camera evidence at the press conference, but he city’s 10-day trial implementation of body cameras ended in August. This week’s shooting spurred discussion to have permanent implementation by early next year.