According to a recently released report on that four-day manhunt for Dontae Morris last summer, the police search was handled in a “textbook” manner. One detail, however, spoke volumes about the racial context of searching in a black neighborhood for a black man suspected of killing white police officers. It involved the police using the media — not just cooperating with them.
The Justice Department-funded report by the CNA Institute for Public Research noted that police made it a point to inform reporters that Morris was also suspected of killing a black person. The thinking, according to the CNA report: “If the (black) public knew he killed innocent African-American citizens as well as police, they might be more inclined to tolerate the inconvenience of the police searches.”
The thinking obviously was that a predator who had gunned down two police officers and might still be hiding out in their midst still wasn’t a sufficiently compelling scenario to assume cooperation from locals. Sobering.