Massachusetts' highest court says black men may be legally justified in running from the police
In a decision issued Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that in light of data evidencing disproportionate police profiling of black men, a black man's decision to flee police may be legitimate and should not automatically be treated as suspicious behavior or an implicit admission of guilt:
The ruling specifically concerned the case of Jimmy Warren, an African-American man who was arrested based on a very vague description of a criminal suspect and the fact that he ran from a cop. Though Warren wasn't caught with any contraband, he was charged with possession of an unlicensed gun found near the place of his arrest.
This decision overturned Warren's conviction. It was hailed as momentous progress for minorities in America by the American Civil Liberties Union and as a disappointing ruling which is "heavily tainted" against police by Boston's police commissioner.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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