Ok, well, how to deal with the situation? On the one hand, it is true that cops of color are placed in communities of color as a more efficient form of social control. A vietnamese cop told the San Jose Mercury that he told members of his community that he would have probably acted similarly in the same situation.
On the other hand, in an imperfect world, I would still prefer having vietnamese speaking cops, as opposed to say english speaking ones, in my neighborhood if I were vietnamese. Perhaps, as the above cop suggested, he would have done the same. On the other hand, given that the woman spoke almost no englsh and the cop did not speak a word of vietnamese, the situation MIGHT have been prevented from ending in tragedy.
It would be an important demand, on the part of the vietnamese community, that vietnamese cops get assigned to their community; on the other hand, it would be important for them to understand the nature of the police system in this society-no matter the race, etc, of a given member of that system- in general and not have any illusions about that.
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