Even in today's polarized America, reasonable people should be able to agree that a police officer who kills someone complying with his commands should not just lose his job and otherwise get off scot-free. But apparently not, particularly if the victim is black.

On Friday, Jeronimo Yanez, who was a St. Anthony, Minn., police officer when he shot and killed Philando Castile on July 6, was acquitted of manslaughter and other charges by a St. Paul jury. Accounts of the incident state that Yanez asked for a driver's license and insurance card. Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, was sitting next to him. She said Castile was fully complying and that he also told Yanez he had a weapon, which he was licensed to carry, in his pocket.

When Castile reached for his driver's license, Yanez thought he was reaching for the gun and fired seven shots. Castile's last words were, "I wasn't reaching for it."

The jury of 10 whites and two blacks accepted Yanez's testimony that he feared for his life. They agreed his action met the Supreme Court's standard of an "objectively reasonable fear."

Philip Stinson, a former officer turned criminologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, keeps a database of police shootings, which occur at the rate of about 1,000 a year. Most officers, like Ferguson's Darren Wilson, who shot 18-year-old Michael Brown to death in 2014, are never charged.

Of the 62 charged since 2005, only 29 have pleaded or been found guilty of excessive force. In perhaps the most egregious recent incident, former North Charleston, S.C., officer Michael Slager, caught on video in 2015 shooting a fleeing black man in the back from a distance of 17 feet, pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge to escape another state murder trial. The first one, in December, ended with a hung jury after Slager testified he was "in total fear" of his life.

Clearly, police training and recruiting needs to get better. More emphasis should be given to teaching officers about implicit bias, the reality that officers (and civilians) see blacks as inherently more dangerous. Society fills the streets with guns and asks officers to deal with it, giving them special legal protection and an effective right to deprive people of their life and liberties. In return, citizens expect higher standards.

One curious aspect about the Castile case has been the silence of the NRA. Here was a man legally carrying a weapon — the NRA's classic "good guy with a gun." Had he been white, the NRA would surely have expressed outrage.

On the other hand, as Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton suggested last year, a white man might well still be alive. To believe otherwise is to pretend race isn't a problem in America.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH