Black and white Minnesotans have dramatically opposing views of whether authorities should have charged two Minneapolis police officers in the shooting death of Jamar Clark late last year, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll.
Among black respondents, 68 percent believe that Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman was wrong to not file charges against the officers when he made the announcement in late March. Only 17 percent of black respondents supported Freeman's decision.
"The boy was shot in the head," said Kim Tucker, a poll respondent from Minneapolis who is black. "They're trained to shoot people in different areas, and that was close range. That, to me, was an execution."
In stark contrast, 66 percent of white respondents agreed with Freeman's conclusion; only 11 percent disagreed.
"If he would have taken them to trial, they would have beaten him up on it," said Robert Seigel, a poll respondent from Moorhead, Minn.
The poll of 1,001 registered voters conducted late last week reveals a stark racial divide over how Minnesotans have interpreted the events surrounding Clark's death in November, the protests that ensued and general perceptions about how police treat black people compared with whites.
Minnesotans were more evenly divided on whether police could have done more to diffuse the situation short of deadly force, with 35 percent saying police should have been less confrontational.
Clark's death touched off weeks of protests outside Minneapolis' Fourth Precinct police headquarters. The death was the latest in a wave of police shootings of unarmed black men around the country, prompting new criticism that police are too quick to use lethal force with black men.