On Saturday, July 15th, Justine Damond was shot and killed by Officer Mohamed Noor after responding to a noise complaint made by Damond:

The Minnesota cop who shot and killed an Australian bride-to-be opened fire on her after being startled by a “loud sound” near his patrol car, investigators say. Officer Mohamed Noor, 31, began blasting at 40-year-old Justine Damond, of Minneapolis, just moments after he and his partner, Matthew Harrity, heard the noise in the alley behind her house, according to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

One notable difference between this shooting and others that make headlines is the fact that a black man (a Somali migrant, no less) shot and killed a white woman; one could only imagine the public’s reaction would be far different if the “race shoe” was on the other foot.

No matter the circumstances, the prudent thing to do in all instances of shootings is to wait until the facts come out before making any judgments. And in Noor’s case, the facts point towards a bad decision, which was spurred on by poor officer training and relaxed hiring standards that were focused on adding “members of the community” to the police force.

The red flags start to pop up as soon as you look into how the incident unfolded:

The Star Tribune, citing three people with knowledge of the shooting, said the officers pulled into the alley in a single squad car, and Ms Damond talked to the driver. The newspaper’s sources, which it did not name, said the officer in the passenger seat shot her through the driver’s-side door. Officials said the officers’ body cameras were not turned on and a squad car camera did not capture the shooting. Investigators were still trying to determine whether other video exists. It’s not clear why the officers’ body cameras were not on.

To be fair, there are reports of both single and multiple shots being fired, so it could be a case of a “negligent discharge.” However, this would mean the absolute best case scenario for the officer is an atrocious display of trigger discipline and general lack of regard for firearm safety. It is difficult to believe that the Minneapolis police department administered any training which detailed a scenario that an officer seated in the passenger seat of a squad car should point their firearm towards their fellow officer in the driver’s seat while he is engaging in a dialogue with an unknown individual:

Mr Noor’s gun was on his lap — and not in his holster — at the time on the incident.

In the worst case scenario, it would mean that an officer’s training (or lack thereof) actually found it to be acceptable to direct his firearm’s muzzle towards his fellow officer while firing at another person. Would anyone be surprised to learn that Noor graduated from a “fast-track” program designed to get cops on the street as fast as possible…

The officer who fatally shot Justine Damond graduated in 2015 from the city’s accelerated police cadet program. The seven-month training is a quicker, nontraditional route to policing aimed at helping those who already have a college degree enter law enforcement. The Minneapolis program covers tuition at Hennepin Technical College and pays trainees a $20-an-hour salary with benefits while they work to get licensed. After that their salary bumps up.

…and would anyone be surprised to learn that he had a history of problems in his police record prior to the incident, and had a history of displaying a lack of respect for women in particular?

The Minnesota police officer who shot and killed an Australian bride-to-be has had three complaints filed against him during his two-year law enforcement career. Two of the three complaints in Mohamed Noor’s police file are active, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. One was closed without discipline.

“He is extremely nervous … he is a little jumpy … he doesn’t really respect women, the least thing you say to him can set him off,” Mr Miller said.

At first glance, this appears to be a “fast-track” training program designed to get cops on the street that had a major lapse with Noor. However, Minneapolis is known as having one of the highest migrant populations in the U.S., particularly Somali, and Somalis were a particular target of the department’s “outreach” program, due to their heavy concentrations in the city:

The city’s affirmative-action program requires it to give preferential treatment to minorities, not only those hired by the city but by all contractors awarded contracts of more than $100,000. The city’s leaders bemoaned the fact that they could not come up with more blacks to staff 100 new positions that came open at the end of 2014. The Star-Tribune, in an Aug. 19, 2014, article headlined “Minneapolis police struggle to hire diverse force,” interviewed several activists who took the city to task for allowing the number of black officers to dwindle. With 100 new openings, the city was all but apologizing for the fact that at least 71 percent would be white, saying it had tried everything to recruit more blacks over the years, including a pre-high school academy that nurtured young black kids who showed an interest in law enforcement. But was having only marginal success.

Even the Mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, went out of her way to personally recognize Noor’s minority status as a Somali when he was brought onto the police force:

Mohamed Noor is a Somali Muslim. Last year, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges expressed her excitement about his joining the police force: I want to take a moment to recognize Officer Mohamed Noor, the newest Somali officer in the Minneapolis Police Department. Officer Noor has been assigned to the 5th Precinct, where his arrival has been highly celebrated, particularly by the Somali community in and around Karmel Mall.

So the facts support a different conclusion; this was clearly an affirmative action hire, which resulted in a poorly-trained and unqualified officer winding up on the force. You might be stunned, but you should hardly be surprised to learn that Hodges quickly changed her tune about Noor following the incident…

At a press conference to respond to Saturday’s fatal officer-involved shooting in southwest Minneapolis’ Fulton neighborhood, Mayor Betsy Hodges said she was “heartsick and deeply disturbed” by the incident that left a woman dead. “I am heartsick and deeply disturbed by the fatal officer-involved shooting last night that happened in southwest Minneapolis,” Hodges said.

…but that didn’t stop her from blaming the incident on the policies of her police chief and forcing her out. Notably, the chief might have gotten her own job as a result of Hodges’ “commitment to diversity” on the police force:

Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau resigned abruptly Friday amid growing criticism from the public and the City Council following the fatal police shooting of Justine Damond. The chief’s departure came at the request of Mayor Betsy Hodges, who promptly nominated Assistant Chief Medaria Arradondo, a 28-year veteran of the force, to replace Harteau. The move ended Harteau’s 4½-year run as the first woman and first openly gay person to head the department. Clearly, this “commitment to diversity” displayed by Hodges, Harteau and the city of Minneapolis was what put a poorly-trained police officer on the streets, and led to the untimely death of Namond. Affirmative Action policies have more than enough problems; at their core, they encourage people to seek easy access rather than actually becoming qualified. This ends up rewarding unqualified candidates with positions, lowers performance standards, and makes everyone less accountable for failures on the job. These policies rear their ugly heads in places like college admissions, workplace hiring, and military training, putting unqualified candidates in roles they would not ordinarily be able to attain with their own talents. It is sad that it takes the case of Officer Noor to focus attention on the problem of Affirmative Action; he likely would have never been on the force at all if it wasn’t for the “community outreach” programs pushed by Mayor Hodges. But don’t tell that to liberal media like Vox and Think Progress; they still found a way to race-bait and blame white people for their reaction to the facts surrounding the Noor incident: While many people — including some Black Lives Matter activists — criticized the shooting, very few defended Noor in the same way they have stood up for police officers in previous incidents. Not many articles focused on nitpicking the lack of information we have to try to weaken the case against the police. There’s been little to no victim blaming. The difference in reaction is alarming. But it’s not unexpected. The research suggests much of America really does react differently to tragedies involving white victims than black ones. We are seeing that play out in real time in the response to Damond’s death.

When victims of police shootings are black, many pundits demand patience, withhold judgment of the officer’s actions, and start looking for dirt on the person killed. Damond isn’t targeted with the same prejudicial scrutiny, and Noor isn’t getting the same wait-and-see defense. These reactions are astonishing in their racism, but the problem goes far beyond that. They also exonerate the police institutions that trained Noor, the conduct regulations that governed his behavior, and the political environment in which he and all other police currently operate.

Yes, liberal media really believes that objective analysis of the facts on a case-by-case basis has amounted to racism, because the facts clearly point to Noor making a poor decision due to poor training. Notice how liberal media omitted conservative reaction to the shooting by Officer Michael Slager?