Luther O. Tyus, graduate research assistant at the Brown School and an eight-year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department
As a young African-American officer, I understood the threat of losing one’s life in the line of duty. But today, as an eight-year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department who studies ways to improve officer training, I also understand — as the recent shooting of Stephon Clark reminds us — that police shoot black Americans at higher rates than they do white Americans.
To understand why officers choose to kill, we must first examine how the brain works under deadly duress — a social science known as “killology.”
To save lives, especially in urban, minority-rich environments, we must train officers to understand how the brain responds in conditions of deadly duress.
Read the full piece at CNN.com.
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