The case of Amber Guyger and Botham Jean is the most sobering example of implicit bias and the need for a retraining of police throughout our nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guyger, 31, was convicted Oct. 1 of murder in the Sept. 6, 2018 killing of Jean, a 26-year-old accountant. Jean was sitting in his own apartment \u2013 minding his own business \u2026 eating ice cream \u2013 when Guyger walked in, allegedly mistaking it for her own, and within seconds gunned down Jean. Guyger, who is a white female, was at the time a Dallas police officer. Jean was a Black male. It\u2019s important we describe Jean in the past tense to underscore the fact he is no longer among the living. He was only granted 26 short years on this earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Guyger she was groggy from a 13-hour shift and got off on the fourth floor of her building instead of the third and entered Jean\u2019s apartment, which was directly above hers. Upon entering, she encountered Jean who was on his couch \u2013 his couch<\/em> \u2013 and was almost immediately shot. According to the medical examiner the bullet traveled in a downward direction indicating Jean never fully arose from his seat before being gunned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Guyger, who herself was the perpetrator of the crime of trespassing at the time, was somehow afforded the defense of the castle doctrine, a law that states a person has the right to defend him or herself from an intruder in the premises of his or her own dwelling. Let\u2019s keep in mind Guyger was the intruder, but I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, Guyger (or anyone) could have easily mistaken one apartment for another. Compound it with coming off a 13-hour shift and it adds to the disorientation I\u2019m sure. Hell, I\u2019ve gone to the wrong car and tried to open in on multiple occasions. But I never hopped in and shot someone \u2026 then tried to claim the victim<\/em> was in the wrong for having the temerity to be in his or her own vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But let\u2019s also understand the evidence showed the former police officer was sexting at the time, adding to her distraction. So she didn\u2019t notice she was on the wrong floor, didn\u2019t notice the wrong apartment number, didn\u2019t notice that none of the furniture in the apartment was<\/p>\n\n\n\n hers \u2013 no red welcome mat, no large ottoman like hers. What she did see was a Black man and she was \u2026 in her own words \u2026 \u201cscared whoever was inside my (keep in mind it wasn\u2019t hers) apartment was going to kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t doubt for one minute she was scared. Of course she was scared \u2026 because she was taught to be scared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, society as a whole has demonized the Black man to be anything and everything other than human being. Add a bit of size to the person and well, to white people, the Black man may as well be a yeti (see Mike Brown, see Eric Garner, Alton Sterling \u2026 see 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean). Actually, scratch that, yetis are far more beloved than the Black man. But Guyger\u2019s fear was no doubt compounded by her profession and her so-called training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Kwadwo Frimpong, a senior research analyst in the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative at the Brookings Institute, an unarmed Black male is four times more likely to be killed by police than an unarmed white male. Police are trained to see the Black man (and child, see Tamir Rice) as a threat, and police are trained to extinguish the \u201cthreat\u201d through methods known as \u201cwarrior training.\u201d It is no doubt that training kicked in when Guyger decided it was easier to shoot first and ask questions later when she entered into Jean\u2019s castle; not her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of her other training stuck with her \u2026 observe the surroundings \u2026 remove yourself from harm\u2019s way \u2026 deescalate the situation. But neutralize the \u201cthreat\u201d kicked right in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the report \u201cImplicit Bias and Policing\u201d authored by Katherine B. Spencer, Amanda K. Charbonneau and Jack Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley, they determined, \u201cPolice officers must frequently assess civilians\u2019 ambiguous behavior to decide whether to take action, and stereotypes linking Blacks with aggression have been shown to cause people to judge the behavior of a Black person as more aggressive than the identical behavior of a white person,\u201d and \u201cthey are also important factors in deciding whether someone poses a threat to personal safety, which is a critical component of officers\u2019 decisions to use force.\u201d The report goes on to state, \u201cStereotypes of African-Americans as aggressive and subhuman have clear implications for law enforcement practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well isn\u2019t that the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One can only wonder what would have been the outcome had Guyger seen a white man sitting on the couch eating ice cream. I believe he would have at least got the courtesy of a conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To Guyger and far too many other officers \u2013 especially white officers \u2013 the Black man is a threat. Jean didn\u2019t get to be a hard-working upwardly mobile accountant; he was a big Black man and that\u2019s all Guyger needed to know about him. And for that he\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sadly, he\u2019s not the last. He won\u2019t be the last until we as a society deal with the issues of implicit bias, racial profiling and a retraining of our nation\u2019s police. I wish I were wrong here, but we all know I\u2019m not. And that\u2019s the sobering reality. To quote the urban poet Childish Gambino, \u201cThis is America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The case of Amber Guyger and Botham Jean is the most sobering example of implicit bias and the need for a retraining of police throughout our nation. Guyger, 31, was convicted Oct. 1 of murder in the Sept. 6, 2018 killing of Jean, a 26-year-old accountant. Jean was sitting in his own apartment \u2013 minding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4632,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2857,2858,2859],"class_list":["post-4631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-world","tag-amber-guyger","tag-botham-jean","tag-mike-brown","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Insight-News-Website-Images-22.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4633,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4631\/revisions\/4633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}