On May 28th, Officer Omar Edwards was shot and killed while out of uniform by fellow officer Andrew Dunton.  Edwards is black, Dunton is white.  This places the killing third in a line of recent examples demonstrating the risks facing black NYC cops:

In January 2008, a Mount Vernon officer, Christopher A. Ridley, 23, was killed by Westchester County police officers in downtown White Plains as he tried to restrain a homeless man whom he had seen assault another person… And in February 2006, a New York City officer, Eric Hernandez, 24, was fatally shot by a fellow officer while responding to a 911 call about a fight at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx.

I think that there’s definitely something to say about the role that race played in incident, a conversation that doesn’t finish just because Mayor Bloomberg thinks the events are “inexplicable.”  But none of that conversation includes the premise of Colleen Long’s musings on these events, put on my radar by the inestimable Sista Toldja:

NEW YORK — It’s a police officer’s nightmare scenario: Confronting someone who appears to be an armed suspect and opening fire, only to discover that person was actually an officer not in uniform.

Toldja’s response sums up my position perfectly:

No, you privileged idiot, you got that all wrong. Here’s a revision: It’s a Black police officer’s nightmare scenario: you are in plainclothes and confronting a suspect, only to discover that a White officer has also responded to the crime and assumes that you, too, are a criminal. If shooting innocent Black men was such a big fear for White cops, then it wouldn’t happen so often. They wouldn’t be so apt to shoot first, ask questions last.

A few places have started to drill down the layers of possible racial bias, here’s the Racialicious round-up.

Apparently Dunton has been put on desk duty.  He has had four previous civilian complaints in the last 4 years, two of which cited excessive force.  Edwards is survived by his wife, Danielle, and two children:  1 and a half year old Xavier and 7-month-old Keanua.  His funeral was yesterday.

Photo credit: Ruby Washington

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