Concerns as American police hasten to shoot blacks

Inside a park on a cold afternoon of November 22, 2014, in
Cleveland, Ohio, a 12-year-old boy pulled his toy gun to play
in the breezy weather. He walked playfully along the park
alley, pointing his toy at passersby. A weary park visitor,
scared the child may be carrying a deadly weapon at a public
park, called the police to report that a child was “pulling a gun
in and out of his pants and pointing it at people.” The caller,
after noticing that the gun the child was carrying was a toy,
called back the 911 operator to say that the boy was only
holding a toy but it was too late. The police had dispatched
its patrol men on duty. Few minutes later, the team arrived at
the park where the black child was innocently mesmerising
park goers with his holstered toy gun. Two seconds after the
officers arrived, one of the responding officers, Timothy
Loehmann, pulled his gun, engaged his fingers on the trigger
and fired at the child. The child fell on the ground. His 14-
year-old sister that had accompanied him to the park to play,
rushed towards the fallen brother, but police restrained her.
The men handcuffed the sister. She would watch her brother
struggle to stay alive as police stood beside a dying child,
waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Several minutes later, the
ambulance arrived and rushed him to the hospital emergency
room for treatment. The child, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old
African-American died the next morning.
Cameroonian immigrant, Charly “Africa” Leundeu Keunang was
convicted in 2000 for bank robbery. Three years into his 15-
year sentence, he was transferred to a psychiatric prison
hospital due to mental health illness and subsequently
released into the streets of Los Angeles. He became a
destitute and homeless, pitching his tent along any busy street
in Los Angeles. On March 1, passersby reported a fight along
the sidewalks of the busy street involving Keunang. Five
officers responded to the call. The officers approached
Keunang and a fight ensued. He was fatally shot during
struggle with the police. The fatal altercation that resulted in
the death of the unarmed homeless black man in the hands of
the Los Angeles police department attracted major protests
from blacks in the vicinity of the incident and also around the
Los Angeles police department yard.
Mariam Carey was a 34-year-old single mother who lived in
Washington D.C. On October 3, 2013, Ms. Carey was driving
along Pennsylvania Avenue when she suddenly realised that
she might be travelling the wrong path. She drove into a white
house road block. Panicked, with her child in the back seat,
she quickly attempted a U-Turn. During the U-Turn, she
allegedly hit a barricade and a secret service in front of the
White House. A chase ensued between her and the secret
service; the police surrounded and cornered her, then shot her
five times. She died on the scene. She was unarmed. Her
daughter was sitting in the back seat. The US Attorney’s office
refused to press charges on the officers and agents.
These cases are part of the more than 1,217 deadly police
shootings from 2010 to 2014 captured in the federal data.
Blacks between the ages of 15 and 19 were killed at a rate of
31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in
that age range died at the hands of police.
Within the past seven years, a white police officer has targeted
blacks for fatal shooting at the ratio of two blacks per week.
This statistics is contained in the most recent accounts of
justifiable homicide by the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
“On average, there were 96 such incidents among at least 400
police killings each year that were reported to the FBI by local
police.”
The number of police killings of unarmed black Americans
seems to have increased within the past year. Sadly, most of
the shootings absolve police and leave families to mourn the
death of their innocent children caught in what is regarded as
a polarised racial killing of blacks by mostly overzealous,
trigger happy white police officers.
Since last summer’s killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in
Ferguson, one of the most celebrated cases and unrests in the
United States, several police related deaths have been
reported involving white officers shooting black people.
Another major case was a New Yorker, Eric Gardner who was
choked to death while police were attempting to restrain him.
Officers involved in these killings have either been suspended
or reduced to desk duties or as in the case of Officer Darren
Wilson who shot Brown in Ferguson and The New York police
officer that choked Gardner to death, not indicted.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its recent
data compilation concluded that black people or persons of
colour are most likely to be killed by cops. The crime news
trends on the television screen, these days with reports of
police shooting mostly black unarmed citizens. The case of
Rumaim Brisbon, an Arizona native provided an insight into
police rush to self defence, a ‘shoot now and ask questions
later’ mentality. Earlier this year, someone reported a drug
deal in the neighbourhood where Brisbon resided. Police
approached his vehicle, screamed at him to raise his hands in
the air as police approached his vehicle. Brisbon got off his
vehicle. He suddenly began running from the scene towards
the street. Police began a chase on foot, pulling weapons and
pointing towards Brisbon. As Brisbon reached his pocket
during the chase to remove the bottle of pills in his pocket and
discard them, police shot him. The officer later explained that
he had fired a shot because he thought Brisbon had a gun.
The gun was a bottle of pills. He died instantly.
Keith Vidal was an 18-year-old schizophrenic living in
Southport, North Carolina. He was in the middle of an attack
episode when neighbours noticed his sudden changed
conditions and called the police. When police arrived his
home, they found Keith engaged in schizophrenic episode,
carrying a screw driver. Two officers that came as first
respondents approached him calmly and tried to calm him
down. A third officer suddenly walked into the scene and
fatally shot the teenager, alleging that, “We don’t have time
for this shit.” He shot the mentally ill teenager to death.
The Department of Justice last month began to call out
corrupt police departments in some United States cities. It
began with a review of the Ferguson Police department where
it found during investigations that the Ferguson Police
department was a rogue outlaw where the cops and
authorities engage in unconstitutional practices and racial
profiling. This Monday, the department in a scathing report of
the Philadelphia Police department, accused the police of
commonly arresting black men in the city without reasonable
cause. The Justice department found that over the past eight
years, once a week, the Philadelphia Police department opened
fire at suspects 390 times. The shootings, D.O.J found,
involved 454 patrol police officers and suspects were always
black. The statistics were a strong insight into the use of
lethal and brutal force on blacks by a major city police
department in the United States Police law enforcement.