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Saturday, July 23, 2016

Occupying Force

Yet another cop who needs to do the right thing right now, resign his post and go to vocational school. There is no excuse for this. They're goddamned lucky that their bumbling didn't kill anyone.

Charles Kinsey, the caretaker who was shot while lying prostrate, should not have had to splay himself out in the roadway in the first place. He did nothing wrong. Maybe it was just two dudes sitting in the fucking road, are we drawing our guns right away for that now too? I hope he sues the fuck out of them.
The North Miami Police Department said it had received a 911 call of a man threatening to commit suicide with a gun pointed at his head. "At some point during the on-scene negotiation" with the two men, one of the officers fired, striking Kinsey, police said.

....

John Rivera, the president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, said Thursday afternoon that the officers "saw the white male almost on top of Mr. Kinsey, who had his hands up and who had his knees up, and to the officers, it looked like the white male was about to shoot Mr. Kinsey," Rivera said. "The officers all thought the individual had a firearm, not a toy truck."

Rivera said the officer "was trying to save the life of Mr. Kinsey and feels horrible that his aim missed and struck Mr. Kinsey."
This smells like an industrial fuckton of bush-league ass-covering. For starters, is this how they always respond to 911 suicide calls? Hopefully the media checks out the supposed call in question; chances are the facts won't jibe. Probably a completely different call.

And when the cops do arrive on the scene, ready for action, Kinsey flops on his back, arms up (something, incidentally, it wouldn't even occur to most white people to do, especially when you're just a caretaker trying to help your autistic patient), and explains the situation to the cops, and they still shoot -- and hit the "wrong" person. Way to defuse the fucking situation there, Deputy Fife.

Police in this country need to be retrained, top to bottom, front to back. I'm not getting into the "black lives" aspect of it at all; the problem here is that the level of force that used to be a last resort is now the first and only option. Don't bother assessing the scene an extra second, just react instantly, shoot to kill, and if you fuck up, THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS, YOU GUYS.

No other western country has law enforcement like this. Only banana republics have paramilitaries. This has to stop.

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