Ex-NBA Star: I Don’t Think Police Start the Day Thinking About Targeting Black Men

Ex-NBA Star Jalen Rose: I Don’t Think Police Start the Day Thinking About Targeting Black Men (RealClearPolitics)

JALEN ROSE, FMR. NBA PLAYER: I don't think the police start their day by getting in a car looking at one another as two white cops saying, hey we are going to go harass as many blacks as we can today or shoot them down in cold blood.

What ends up happening is when you have these unfortunate situations that have taken place, that have caused a national uproar, where there's Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown killing or Eric Garner killing, the statistics now have people saying wow, it happens to be a white cop versus a black individual.

Let's further investigate, and when you don't indict, all of a sudden, the hoodie, all of a sudden I can't breathe, now becomes a rally cry, not against the police but against a system that a lot of people sometimes feels like continues to let them down...

I think the goal for everyone, the police officers and the civilians is to get home safely that evening. So, when these encounters happen, as you look deeper into each case, you see armed police officer, unarmed individual who just so happens to be black. You would think that interaction wouldn't result in to someone's death. When that continues to happen, and it's happening in the country that we did, unfortunately, have slavery, we had segregation. So, these relationships take time to repair.