No I am not. I am simply pointing out the the term “captured” does not in itself dehumanize the criminal. To suggest otherwise is pure projection. The term captured / arrested and apprehended are used interchangeably very often in news reports. I see no evidence proffered to suggest that the term is used more or less often when describing offenders of a particular race. Absent such evidence, the argument that the mere use of different synonyms to describe the same act can somehow result in the “dehumanization” of said offender is not tenable.

The study the other poster cited says as much. Nothing novel in the study what so ever. Participants were exposed to description of 3 different crimes; an assault, the murder of young children and embezzlement. Participants were equally morally outraged by all 3 crimes but viewed the child murders as less human and therefore less worthy of rehabilitation and warranting longer sentences.

The important thing to note is that the tendency to view the criminal as less human is not a function of how the crime was described ( something that you and the poster you are responding to are making the case for) rather it is a function of the crime itself. Child murders are viewed as less human than someone who embezzled a few hundred grand! What’s ground breaking about that ??

Apply that to this case, you have a criminal who while being investigate for a series of serious crimes gets into a gun fight with the police in a building full of other residents and ends up shooting and injuring two police officers. He then flees the crime scene and is arrested some time latter. You and the other poster seriously believe that given the facts of the case, this criminal will somehow be prejudiced by the fact that his apprehension was described in a Twitter post as him being “captured” 🤷🏾‍♂️🤦🏾🤷🏾‍♂️