Identities Paragraph

Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a victim of stereotyping? Identities by W.D. Valgardson tells a story of a man who went on a drive from his regular suburban neighbourhood and into one that he had never seen before. While the man drives around the somewhat unpleasant neighbourhood in his Mercedes Benz he catches the attention of a young cop who was trained to recognize someone fitting his description to be of interest as a potential theft. The man left his car and started to go towards a small store, that was near a group of young men and a woman, to call his wife. As the man begins to walk up to the store the police officer gets out of his car and orders the man to halt, before the man is able to get his identification out from his shirt pocket the officer shoots the man with his pistol. Although the officer was trained to look for someone matching the mans description, he was not justified when he shot the man. The officer had no reasonable way to be suspicious of the man as he was just judging him off of his appearance and the car that he was driving. Once the officer got out of his car with his pistol he immediately resorted to use violence against the man who did not even have the time to say a word to the officer. The man never once did anything that would lead to the officer being suspicious of him, so the man lost his life due to an officer who judged him solely based off assumptions rather than investigating his suspicions.