On the afternoon of Sunday, July 21, 30-year-old  Lamont Earl Dukes and his friend, both African American males, were stopped at a Walgreens pharmacy by a St. Louis police officer conducting a “pedestrian check”, a euphemism for stopping people of color in “high-crime neighborhoods” without probable cause.

The police report claims that the officer recognized Dukes’ friend as having been banned from that particular Walgreens. The men complied and exited the store. Once outside, Dukes allegedly made a run for it “while grabbing his right waistband”, according to police. That was reason enough for the cop to suspect Dukes had a gun so he chased after him, demanding he “stop and raise his hands.” Here’s what the police report says happened next (fyi, Suspect #1 is Dukes):

Suspect #1 fled to the east alley of the above address and when the officer entered the alley, he observed that Suspect #1 had stopped running and was in a semi-crouched position while turning toward him and raising his right hand from his waistband. Fearing for his safety, the officer discharged his Department issued firearm, striking Suspect #1.

But it turns out Dukes, who was shot twice (once in the ass and once in the leg), was unarmed. Police say he ran away because he was “wanted”, though it’s unclear what for. Having covered many police shootings, I’m certain that had Dukes been wanted for a serious or violent offense, the police would have publicized it immediately to paint him as a thug who deserved to get shot. Also, keep in mind that everything we know about the situation is based on police accounts. As far as I can tell, Dukes has yet to be quoted by a single media outlet.

Police Capt. Michael Sack later later told reporters that investigators recovered four shell casings from the scene, meaning the officer shot at Dukes a total of four times. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the St. Louis police department.

The following day, as Dukes was lying in a hospital bed in serious condition, the St. Louis police department filed charges against him for “resisting arrest.” They also arrested the man who was with Dukes at Walgreens. As for the cop who shot Dukes, he’s on administrative leave pending an investigation, which is routine in most officer-involved shootings. But so is the officer getting away with it.

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A quick note about “reaching for your waistband while black”:

If your’e anything like me, you’re thinking that people grab their waistbands for all kinds of reasons: to pull their pants up, keep their pants from falling down, adjust their belt, access their cell phone, scratch an itch…you get the picture. But people of color, are different. Judging by the behavior of police nationwide, waistbands of color, particularly black waistbands, are inherently dangerous, which I’m assuming is lesson number one in police academy.  Hence, a black man touching, reaching, grabbing, scratching or pulling at his waistband in the presence of law enforcement is the equivalent of firing a loaded gun at police.

Sarcasm aside, the reality is that police are more likely to shoot an unarmed black person than an unarmed person of any other race. This has been demonstrated by one study after another, one of the most recent appearing in the Journal of Social Issues last year.

The research—conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder and San Diego State University—examined the impact of racial bias on the decision to shoot at armed and unarmed suspects of different races (White, Black, Latino & Asian). The study was the first of its kind to examine the decision to shoot in a multi-ethnic context, finding that police exhibit a “hierarchy of bias”, meaning their decision to shoot was based on the perceived threat from each particular racial group, with Black suspects viewed as the most threatening, followed by Latinos, then Whites, and finally Asians, a group both students and police viewed as the least dangerous, pointing to what researchers call a “positive bias”.

Supporters of racial profiling tend to believe that implicit biases are fairly based on the reality that black people are more likely than white people to be armed criminals. But that’s not at all the case. For proof, look no further than NYPD’s stop and frisk program.

An analysis of stop and frisk data from 2012 by the New York City Public Advocate published in May, found that “African-American and Latino New Yorkers are consistently less likely to yield weapons and contraband than those of white New Yorkers.” More specifically:

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.

• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.

Yet Latinos and African Americans continue to make up over 80 percent of stops.

It would be easy to blame the racial disparities in stops, arrests and police killings on some sort of inherent racism that plagues American law enforcement. But the truth is American culture conditions all of us, not just police, to view people with darker skin as more threatening. This message is all around us: in books, movies, TV shows, news coverage, political rhetoric.

A 2011 study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology was the first of its kind to demonstrate American culture itself to be the root of unconscious biases. This by no means excuses individuals like the St. Louis cop who shot Lamont Dukes. But it does mean to dismantle the racial inequities created by implicit racism, we have to first address our own culpability and, for those of us in positions to do so, we need to change the way people of color are portrayed in the media.

As Paul Verhaeghen, a Georgia Tech psychologist and co-author of the above study, wrote,  “Being faster to associate ‘black’ with ‘violence’ doesn’t imply that you are a hardcore racist, it sadly just means you’re American.”