Brandishing a shotgun at a group of people in the middle of the day is a cite-and-release offense? In some cities, the SWAT team would have burst through his front door and would not care if he was killed.

Of course it was a cite-and-release case.

When you're white, the rules are completely different.

Being a Latino I definitely would have faced a different outcome.

Did they take the shotgun away? Did he have other weapons?

Hearkens back to the other recent gun-related post where someone reminded us that a gun in the home is something like a dozen times more likely to harm someone than be used in self-defense.

One person here would define it as a defensive use, while society as a whole says it's a crime.

If the gun was used in the course of committing a crime it would certainly have been removed. To suggest that the outcome would have been different if this person was of a different race is in and of itself a racist remark and disrespectful to the police. You have very little information to reach such a conclusion, shame on you for perpetuating racist stereotypes against any race.

What we don't know from this article is the realistic threat level associated with this incident. Brandishing a weapon can encompass a variety of situations, from a cranky old man acting stupid to a harrowing, life threatening experience. If this was a vivid, life threatening event, the police were wrong to release him. We don't know from this information.

What we do know is that statistics show racial minorities tend to have different outcomes with police than whites. Is this racism? Again, depends on the situation and the point of view. If a black man and a white man behaved exactly the same way, but received different outcomes, I would agree it is. Other data shows the behavior is not necessarily the same in all of these situations. That can be blamed on racism that existed years earlier, and a case could be made for it.

Bottom line is that there are racist police, but that does not mean a police situation is automatically racist.