OK she had more options. But the option she took seems OK to me, not sure why you think it's so awful.

Because he's black, and the only logical reason for her to react that way is because she has an innate fear of black guys. Period, full stop. That's the thought process.

Since when are panic and cowardice considered among the finer qualities of character? This lady had how many minutes to calm down? Oh sorry it was noisy. LOL.

When did we let the chickens start running the coop?

So her panicking was unreasonable because a cop acted so recklessly that he was charged by his own department less than a day after the incident? Um. OK.

The cop can be a criminal and the woman can still be wrong for having panicked. And yeah, crippling terror is not the correct reaction when someone shows up unexpectedly on your doorstep, no matter the hour and no matter the noise.

Maybe she could have turned off the alarm to find out what he wanted. Or just not manually set it off in the first place.

The dog was barking because she set off the alarm.

In the hypothetical of what she should have done, what a non-racist non-paranoid would have done, noise from either would not have happened.

So assign percentages for the woman and the cops culpability in the guys murder.

ZOMG a woman had an "incorrect" reaction, SHE'S A MONSTER

Let's see...



Yep, nailed it!

Any opinion offered by the woman is strictly incidental. She is not liable for her interpretation of what the guy was doing as long as she reported the facts faithfully. Any focus on her culpability here just takes away focus from the person truly at fault: the shooting officer.

The police officer should have correctly assessed the situation. Period.

If only she had been an Internet Tough Guy this tragedy might have been averted.

Yeah, boy, the brass balls on those people shouting through locked doors. What bravado. What recklessness.

You've got this woman marked as a despicable racist coward because she didn't follow your approved 6-point plan on being confronted with a mysterious stranger in the middle of the night while's she's home alone with her kid.

I don't think it's "awful". I think trying to draw a line between her calling the cops and the guy dying that puts her at fault for his death is pretty dumb.

I do think what she did was not ideal, and to me the valuable takeaway from this (I'm repeating myself, I know) is that bad things can happen if we let fear guide our actions, make more of an attempt to give people the benefit of the doubt and rush to judgement with imperfect information.

Bad things can also happen if women home alone give strangers at 2:30 AM the benefit of the doubt in the face of imperfect information. She didn't react "ideally" whatever that means but she reacted the way she reacted and there's absolutely no evidence race played any factor in it. It certainly is plausible that she was more frightened of this black man than she would have by a white man, but who cares. She has no culpability in this situation whatsoever.

Yeah well I'm biased. I learned a very hard way that the first thing to do in a crisis is remain calm. This is why I express scorn at white knighting 15 minutes of panic in this situation.

Unless the guy has a gun in his hand (and you obviously look through the peephole or better yet a window to see first), I'm not sure what the negatives are of asking questions through a closed door, which is all anybody is suggesting.

Setting aside race, cops, anything else- we're all better off if we don't act like "strangers" are some scary thing.

When Deuces McKracken makes more sense than half the people in this thread.... Hell has frozen over or its april fools.

Lol, which is why the guy was yelling for her to turn the alarm off.

Dude, she told the cops he was a violent criminal. If you don't think that played any part in this then I don't know what to tell you.

so I can tell cops a guy is violent and they kill him

Lol, who is saying that's the only possible reason? I think, and I imagine Wookie et. al. think that a negative perception of black males heightened her state of fear to the point where she was crippled. Again, there is no reason for her to think this guy is a home invader over any of the other possibilities out there. On top of this, it is fairly well documented that white people are generally more afraid of black people. This fear distorts perception, like, perhaps, by making a woman think that a distressed guy on her doorstep is trying to break in or, say, making a neighborhood watchman assume an innocent kid is a thief casing houses.

While that is likely true- cops more than most should be clearly aware that people in general, and especially people in distress, are terrible at describing what actually happened. Especially before they start killing people.

LOL. Man, it's not ANY case with you guys.

The reason this thread exists isn't because the "woman is a racist" angle is getting pushed by that Shadowy Pro Negro Conspiracy that runs NBC and also goofyballer, it's a thread because that's being disputed by the same ****ing crew of white supremacists who throw a victimhood party whenever damn near anything gets called racist.

It's so ****ing weird. People can call her hysterical, or irrational, or wrong, but don't anyone dare imply she's a racist! Tien's feelings are at stake!