In the Stand your Ground paradigm, such as we have seen in the Trayvon Martin case in Miami, there have been increased killings of minorities. Interestingly, when these laws are attempted to be used by minorities themselves, in their own self defence, they are not successful, since the threshold for non-liability appears to be higher. We saw, for example, this in the Merlene Alexander case, concerning a black woman who unsuccessfully tried to use the defence when she fired a warning shot after being in fear of her life due to a domestic violence situation. This illuminates the underlying discriminatory attitudes inherent in such laws and the deep subjectivity which frames them. The issue of the excessive use of force, including allegations of torture by the police against black minorities is now well documented and goes beyond special laws permitting latitude. The statistics are alarming. For example, in the USA, black males between 15 and 19 are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police than their white counterparts. The Department of Justice itself has confirmed such inequities. In Brazil, the statistics are equally frightening. As in the case of Stand your Ground laws, the legal norms determining what is excessive force can be surprisingly fluid. Reasonableness is the standard but it is an objective one i.e. what the police believe to be reasonable, not the ordinary person, or the judge, which can be translated to mean a fairly subjective standard, in effect. In many countries, whether the US, or Mexico or elsewhere, there is no statute which attempts to delineate what this should mean in a modern context. Moreover, international legal obligations as to where the base line must be, are typically ignored. In international rights, the principle of proportionality and the preservation of the right to life, are the first premises in terms of policing, not a subjective, or seemingly fluid test of what is reasonable. In a context of structural inequality, in which minorities exist, the standard of reasonableness on the part of a law