Let's talk about patterns - the kinds that might make a police officer think a cell phone is a weapon and vice versa.

And we're not talking about race. We're just talking about patterns.

This, you'll no doubt understand, is important after Craig McDougall was shot and killed by Winnipeg police on Aug. 3 after the cops responded to two 911 calls from a home at 788 Simcoe St.

As of press time, the Winnipeg Police Service maintains McDougall had a knife and refused to drop it. Aboriginal leaders are questioning the presence of a weapon and suggesting the 'knife' might have been a cell phone, as McDougall's girlfriend reportedly heard the fatal shots during a phone conversation that was interrupted by the shooting.

Forget all that. It's a bickering match presently based on hearsay. Let's get back to patterns, without referring to the McDougall incident in any way.

Let's walk through a situation: You're a police officer dispatched to an early morning emergency involving a violent crime in a tough neighbourhood. The dispatcher mentions a weapon was involved. You arrive on scene and discover a man with some sort of dark object in his hand. He refuses to drop it. Things escalate. Guns or Tasers are drawn.

Here's where patterns come in. The brain is bombarded with an enormous amount of information, and so it organizes stimuli into patterns based on knowledge and experience. Doing so allows quicker reactions, especially in fight-or-flight situations.

Do grandmothers pushing baby carriages at noon in Linden Woods carry weapons? Almost never.

How about urban males - not necessarily Aboriginals - standing in the front yard of a house from which a 911 call was made at 5 a.m.? Definitely maybe.

That's where patterns come in, and that's where good and bad decisions based on patterns - not always race - have to be made in a split second.

Those decisions result in another pattern, identified by someone called Grumpy Old Man. These predictions about the aftermath were posted on newwinnipeg.com the day of the McDougall shooting:

"Paramedics should have been called and on scene before police shoot; police are covering up something; Metis/Aboriginals cry racism, demand inquiry; police are trigger happy; police should have done something else; and we will hear what a wonderful young man the cops shot."

All that has come to pass as if Grumpy Old Man has a crystal ball.

Really, he's just talking about a pattern of distrust: dealings between the Winnipeg Police Service and the Aboriginal community are so poisoned by the past that neither side is thinking clearly anymore.

Police relations with Aboriginals are increasingly strained, which leads to tense and quickly escalating conflicts on the streets. Violence ensues, which sets off knee-jerk reactions from a frustrated Aboriginal community that no longer waits for the facts to come out.

The police are so tarnished by Taser-related deaths, fatal shootings of Aboriginals and bungled drunk-driving cases that legitimate Aboriginal concerns about racism are now heaved like pipe bombs into scrums of reporters looking for sound bites.

That's when angry First Nations leaders indiscriminately call the WPS a "gang" and start drawing battle lines.

Suddenly everyone is furious and no one is right. Trust disappears and future confrontations become powder kegs fueled by fear and the suspicion of racism. Tensions increase, people die and reactions become even more vicious.

You might say it's all part of a pattern.

Mike Warkentin is still waiting to hear all the evidence.