Amber Guyger, a Dallas police officer, is facing a manslaughter charge for fatally shooting her black neighbor in his downtown apartment last Thursday. Guyger, who is white, mistakenly entered Botham Shem Jean’s apartment after she thought it was her own, according to police. She was off-duty at the time while still in uniform. Guyger is now on administrative leave and was
released from Kaufman County Jail Sunday night after posting a $300,000 bond. There has been
no official explanation for why Guyger mistook Jean’s apartment for her own, beyond her
statement to police that she believed Jean to be an intruder. Tensions continue to rise in the community after Jean’s mother
asked on NBC if race was a factor in her son’s death: “If it was a white man, would it have been different?” Per a
2017 PRRI survey, racial and ethnic divisions on the issue of police brutality are profound. More than eight in ten (83 percent) black Americans and nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Hispanic Americans reject the idea that police officers treat black Americans and members of other minority groups the same as whites. White Americans are about evenly divided over whether the police treat minority communities the same as whites: 49 percent agree vs. 51 percent disagree.