Why Did the North Miami Police Shoot Charles Kinsey?
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Maybe the “hands up – don’t shoot” touring company should have waited to use that chant a bit longer, because the city of North Miami, Florida has acted out the scenario without needing to force anything to fit.
In what seems a perfect example of “shoot first and refuse to answer questions later” two officers with rifles shot an unarmed, co-operative behavioral therapist from an assisted living facility who was trying to protect and retrieve an autistic resident who had run out into the street. His concern, as evidenced in the cell phone video was to protect the severely impaired autistic man in his care from the police who showed up armed for combat because a report of a “man with a gun.”
While lying on the ground, hands in the air and trying to explain to the cops what was going on and that his patient was holding a toy truck, one of them let off a three round salvo, hitting Charles Kinsey, a black man. Asking the officer why he had just shot him (in the leg) the answer was “I don’t know.”
I don’t know either. I don’t know why an unarmed man with his hands in view and lying on the ground defenseless would be shot by any competent police officer. Is it that he was never trained to keep his finger off the damned trigger or that he’s a cringing paranoid coward? It doesn’t matter, to those that frame matters in our country for us, he must only have done this because he was a racist. Watch the video and you’ll be as puzzled as I am and the man filming it was. “Why they shoot the black boy?” is heard on the recording?
Damned if I know, but we haven’t heard the last of this, nor should we.
Watch the video:
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North Miami Police Department now says that the policeman wasn’t even aiming at the man he shot, but was trying to shoot the harmless Autistic man sitting in the road with a Tonka toy. Is this an explanation or a new question as to competence?
There seem to be a lot of incidents of unarmed mentally ill people being shot. Perhaps it doesn’t fit in to the racism explanation that’s been a best seller recently, but can we talk? Can we question the need for assault rifles on city streets? Can we suspect another “shoot first and make up explanations later” case?
I’m usually the one asking that we wait for all the facts, but this just stinks to high hell. You can hear voices asking why the hell they ignored the madman in the street and shot the other guy. Was the answer to the point? “It’s because of the cops and black people thing.”
The guy was there doing his job trying to talk down a mental patient and get him out of harms way. Who the hell would expect him to expect a bunch of guys with AR-15’s to come running up shouting and screaming in concert with a mental patient hurling insults? He was making a huge effort to cooperate and explain and they shot him. Sweet Jesus, maybe there are some hidden facts, but it’s pretty much a sure thing that Kinsey is going to get a huge settlement and the taxpayer is going to foot the bill.
I think there has to be a lot more attention payed to the best ways to defuse situations without turning a small misunderstanding into a shooting war.
That’s what I meant by keeping your finger off the trigger. One of the first things I was taught when I was a kid and summer camp. There’s some sort of phenomenon. When you have your thumb on the TV remote, after a while you feel it less and you automatically compensate by squeezing harder. Stress makes it worse. I’ve read that the NYPD has a special 8 pound triggeror thereabouts designed to reduce this accidental discharge,
But my big question is why almost all the arrests I’ve seen involve absolute hysteria with screaming so loud it becomes incomprehensible and confusing. You can see people trying to comply but just not being able to understand.
How muc of this is bad training, or teaching the wrong thing? Were the officers more terrified than the mental patient and his therapist? Why?
Part of the use of force continuum speaks to loud, verbal commands, and officers are trained to use them before resorting to actual force. You are right that in some cases this tactic can confuse the situation. You are also right about the 8-pound trigger pull, a policy that enraged police and caused the police unions some stroke-worthy moments. I don’t know what happened here, nor do I know why, after listening to the news for the last 3 hours, I’ve heard nothing about it. I guess the fact that Ted Cruz was booed is more important.
I’m astonished by this. I watched the video several times and at no point did Kinsey pose a threat to anyone. I can only believe the officer accidentally squeezed the trigger. Accidents do happen, but still…..