After 2 officers charged in 2 fatal police shootings, are arrests happening faster?

After 2 officers charged in 2 fatal police shootings, are arrests happening faster?

When Antwon Rose, a black teenager from East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was fatally shot by police this month, it took prosecutors one week to charge the officer with homicide.

In southern Georgia, it also took a week for the officer who killed black driver Anthony Marcel Green to be charged with voluntary manslaughter.

Experts say these cases represent a shift in how police-involved shootings in minority communities are being handled by authorities.

Prosecutors are bringing charges that take witnesses and videos into account, while at the same time acknowledging that they are going to have a difficult time going to trial and obtaining a conviction, said Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

"They generally don't bring charges in any case if they don't think they can win," Stinson said this week. But moving ahead with charges "is a good thing from my perspective because prosecutors are supposed to seek justice, not count 'wins.'"

Charges against an officer remain rare, and convictions even rarer.

So far in 2018, there have been three cases of officers being charged with murder or manslaughter, according to Stinson's data reviewing on-duty shootings.