This white man says he faced a ‘serious threat.’ Police say he committed a hate crime.

[Sunlei]

Deputy Police Chief Tod Kamleiter told The Washington Post that Oedzes yelled the n-word at the man and said “you don’t belong here” before firing his gun on Aug. 22. The victim can be seen on surveillance video dropping to the ground at the sight of the gun, Kamleiter said. Later, the man backs away with his hands raised. Then there’s a bright muzzle flash....

....The encounter in Indiana was one of several last month in which a benign interaction with a racial component escalated to headline-making violence. On Aug. 6, a white man in Raleigh, N.C., told 911 dispatchers that he was “locked and loaded” and going to “secure my neighborhood” from a group of black teens attending a party next door. The man, Chad Copley, fired a shot from his garage, killing an unarmed black man.

Less than three weeks later, Deborah Pearl, a black mother of three, was fatally shot by a white man after the two were involved in a traffic collision in Solon, Ohio.

Last year, The Post’s Christopher Ingraham wrote about police officers who took to Reddit to describe the trend of white people calling the police on their black neighbors for doing innocuous things: The problem? White residents were viewing many of their black neighbors with suspicion. One black homeowner noticed people would snap pictures of his car as he drove around. Another had the cops called on him after he picked up an office chair in an alley that another resident had left out for free. Plenty of African Americans, particularly men, can tell harrowing stories of times they’ve done something normal that somebody else interpreted as “suspicious.” President Obama’s had experience with this himself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/10/this-white-man-says-he-faced-a-serious-threat-police-say-he-committed-a-hate-crime/?tid=pm_national_pop_b&utm_term=.01855d2086b6

[Wounded Bear]

1. The racism has been bubbling to the surface the last few years...

It seems the election of our first black president has made it somehow OK to act out the racist impulses that used to be somewhat contained by social mores. Trump's candidacy is largely an extension of this. It has added to the normalization off racist, mysoginist, and xenophobic behaviors in a very bad way.

[shrike]

2. Um, Flossmoor's in Illinois. Though the guy may be from Indiana

Just sayin'. Terrible incident nonetheless.

[Adsos Letter]

3. Look at that face.

Yeah, you made the biggest mistake of your life and you know it.

[jpak]

4. Poster boy for delorable

yup