The police shootings of three black men you've likely never heard of

Issues of race and police-involved shootings continue to permeate the national conversation, but not every case draws the attention of the national media or organizations like #BlackLivesMatter.

In choosing to write about this subject, I recognize I am entering dangerous waters.

Persons on one side of this conversation are often unwilling to tolerate any mention of the fact that many of these incidents involve persons who are involved in criminal behavior, or who chose to do things that can be reasonably seen as threatening in the moments before being shot.

Persons on the other side of this conversation are often unwilling to consider that the use of deadly force may not always have been necessary even when a crime was being committed, and won't contemplate even the possibility that race can be a factor in any of these instances.

Both groups may not like what I have to say. But after several incidents of black Ohio concealed handgun license (CHL)-holders being shot by police came to my attention, I decided it is worth that risk.

First, a summary of the incidents:

September 15, 2012, 12:20 a.m. - 27 year-old Randall "Brian" Scott Jr., identified in media reports as having a CHL, is shot by a Cleveland officer who stopped Scott after reportedly noticing him walking with an open container of beer. When officers noticed he has a gun, they order him to put his hands up. Scott complies, informing them he has a CHL, but an officer citically injures Scott by shooting him in the abdomen after claiming he lowered his hand 'a bit' below ear level. Neither the officer's partner nor the eight civilian witnesses there at the time Brian was shot report seeing Scott reach for his gun. Instead, numerous witnesses say Scott was attempting to cooperate with officers and began lowering his hands in response to an officer's order that he place his hands behind his back. A Department of Justice investigation concludes later that "the weight of the evidence suggests that Scott was attempting to comply with officers' orders and did not pose an imminent threat of serious bodily harm to the officers or others, and the officer should not have fired his weapon." The City of Cleveland settled with Scott in June 2014 for $540,000.

April 6, 2015, 2:15 a.m. - 22 year-old Joseph Davis Jr., whose mother says has a CHL, is shot through the closed passenger side window of the car he was driving by a Columbus officer who said he saw a passenger with an open bottle of alcohol, and then noticed a gun sticking out of the driver's (Davis') pocket. Davis told his mother that when the police officer addressed them, he looked down at the gun, then both he and his passenger raised their hands before the officer fired. In his statement given during an internal affairs investigation, the officer claims he fired after Davis started to lower his hand. The investigation concludes that the officer's use of a firearm was not in violation of policy.

June 6, 2016, 6:10 p.m. - 23 year-old Henry Green, whose family says has a CHL, is shot to death by plain-clothes Columbus police officers in an unmarked SUV. Green reportedly drew the attention of officers after he was spotted standing with friends while holding a gun. Christian Rutledge, a friend who had been riding with Green, says he never saw any badges or heard them identify themselves as police before shots were fired. He said the officers fired first at Green. Police say they have a witness who tells an alternate version of events - one that involves badges displayed, and Green shooting first. The investigation is ongoing.

So let's get the obvious out of the way. Both Scott's and Davis' encounters with police involved the presence of alcohol, and occurred after midnight (when, according to most mommas I know, nothing good ever happens). Scott was reportedly carrying an open container on a public street, and Davis' passenger was reportedly in possession of an open container in a motor vehicle. Green was reportedly handling his legally-carried pistol in broad daylight, and while open carry isn't illegal, brandishing certainly can be. The bottom line is that these activities are bound to draw the attention of police no matter the amount of melanin in your skin.

The question is, were officers' subsequent actions in any way affected by the fact that these three men are black? Were the officers more nervous or "on edge?" More likely to think they were in danger? Less willing to make certain the CHL-holders' actions were in fact threatening? In Davis' case at least, the officer who fired the shot is also black. Is it also possible for a black officer to behave differently based on the race of his suspect?

When instructing students in my concealed carry classes about what to do if they are detained for a law enforcement purpose (traffic stop, witness to an accident, etc.), I explain that in my experience officers are typically quite friendly to me when I fulfill my legal obligation to promptly identify myself as a concealed handgun license (CHL)-holder during such an encounter. I even go so far as to say that I feel like it's gotten me some grace a time or two when I was given a warning for speeding instead of a ticket. But in the wake of these accounts, as well as the police shooting of Philando Castile, a black man and concealed handgun license-holder from Minnesota, and as a Caucasian man from a small town, I've had to do some soul-searching.

What would it be like if, instead of being seen by most officers as one of the "good guys" when they learned I was carrying, I was instead immediately seen as a threat? What would it be like if my family literally feared for my life if I was carrying (or even if I was unarmed) and got pulled over on a late-night run to the pharmacy or grocery? How would this change my decision to exercise my Second Amendment right to bear arms?

Some will point out that it just makes sense that police would be more wary of a black man with a gun, since black men are more likely to commit violent crimes. It IS true - 13% of Americans are black, and black offenders committed 52% of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice. And according to statistics cited by author Heather MacDonald, "blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and eleven times the rate of whites alone." (Some have suggested that higher poverty rates among various urban black communities might explain the difference in crime rates, although the evidence is mixed.)

"This incidence of crime," MacDonald continues, "means that innocent black men have a much higher chance than innocent white men of being stopped by the police because they match the description of a suspect. That is not something the police choose - it is a reality forced on them by the facts of crime." In other words, law enforcement officers don't have to be racist for the end result to be more frequest stops of innocent black people. But as a law-abiding citizen, it would still be a terrible thing to be on the receiving end of that kind of scrutiny.

Once the stop occurs, I wondered, then are there differences in treatment? According to per-capita data published recently by the Washington Post, black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers, and unarmed black Americans are five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer. But there have been varying versions of these types of statistics released, and the fact is that it is nearly impossible to know with any accuracy how many Americans, black or white, are killed by police each year, since there is no official database or reporting system, and not all police departments report these numbers. In fact, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, literally only a couple hundred police departments (217 in 2012, just 1.2% of all the departments in the country) reported these numbers.

While it would be naïve to believe that there is no racism in the U.S. criminal justice system, I have yet to see evidence of mass discrimination. Nevertheless, it's pretty clear that black CHL-holders have reason to be much more wary of encounters with police, because the statistics seem to suggest that race does play a factor, even if the vast majority of responding officers are not racist.

I don't claim to have answers. This is a complicated issue. But it should go without saying that our fellow law-abiding Americans of African descent have every bit as much right to bear arms as any other citizen. If their rights are being infringed, or if they are being treated differently or caused to be in fear of exercising their Second Amendment rights, gun rights advocates must come to their aid.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.