Trump VP Pick Mike Pence on Terence Crutcher Shooting: Police ‘Make Mistakes’
While the caught-on-video killing of unarmed motorist Terence Crutcher by police has rekindled outrage over a pattern of police violence and oppression against black people, it has thus far not been worth a mention from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump running mate and Indiana Governor Mike Pence did weigh in Tuesday night, however, telling MSNBC’s Brian Williams that incidents like this are “mistakes,” and it is “offensive” to recognize and acknowledge documented phenomena like implicit bias and institutional bias among police.
Obviously, when another incident like this takes place, we fully support a thorough investigation of what took place. You know, the truth of the matter is that police officers are human beings and they make mistakes. And where mistakes are made, they should be held to the strictest account. But what I find offensive is when Hillary Clinton and others refer to implicit bias or institutional bias within the ranks of our law enforcement community broadly.
Pence is referring to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s Tuesday reaction to the shooting, which was to call the series of incidents “unbearable,” and to say that we’ve “got to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias.”