I'll start off with a link to the incident :
Video shows moments before North Miami Police shot unarmed man
OK, to begin with, there is no video of the actual shooting, so it's entirely possible something happened to justify the shooting. I'm not automatically assuming the cop who shot was in the wrong.
Unfortunately, the video that is available seems to show no reason whatsoever for any officer to have fired a shot. The man the article says is autistic is just sitting peacefully in the road playing with a toy. The therapist is laying on the ground with his hands up for the entirety of the video, and seems to be doing what he can to calm the situation down and inform the police that there is no reason for them to feel threatened. What we can see is about the farthest thing from a life-threatening situation you could expect to see after someone makes a 911 call about a man with a gun.
I really hope there is either body cam footage or dash cam footage. The man who was shot could be lying, or have not seen everything, misheard what was said to him, but his description combined with the footage sounds terrible.
Perhaps the shooting was an accident, perhaps something happened that caused the officer to shoot that isn't in the available video. The man didn't seem to be acting like a thug or criminal, nor did he seem the slightest bit threatening, though.
I'll wait to see if there's any more information coming, although since no one died it might not get that much attention.
It's sad that I feel the need to add this qualifier, but in no way do I intend this post to be some sort of condemnation of all police, nor any sort of statement on police relations with minorities. This is, instead, just one incident of possibly bad conduct by some officers that I thought was worth posting about.
Video shows moments before North Miami Police shot unarmed man
OK, to begin with, there is no video of the actual shooting, so it's entirely possible something happened to justify the shooting. I'm not automatically assuming the cop who shot was in the wrong.
Unfortunately, the video that is available seems to show no reason whatsoever for any officer to have fired a shot. The man the article says is autistic is just sitting peacefully in the road playing with a toy. The therapist is laying on the ground with his hands up for the entirety of the video, and seems to be doing what he can to calm the situation down and inform the police that there is no reason for them to feel threatened. What we can see is about the farthest thing from a life-threatening situation you could expect to see after someone makes a 911 call about a man with a gun.
I really hope there is either body cam footage or dash cam footage. The man who was shot could be lying, or have not seen everything, misheard what was said to him, but his description combined with the footage sounds terrible.
Perhaps the shooting was an accident, perhaps something happened that caused the officer to shoot that isn't in the available video. The man didn't seem to be acting like a thug or criminal, nor did he seem the slightest bit threatening, though.
I'll wait to see if there's any more information coming, although since no one died it might not get that much attention.
It's sad that I feel the need to add this qualifier, but in no way do I intend this post to be some sort of condemnation of all police, nor any sort of statement on police relations with minorities. This is, instead, just one incident of possibly bad conduct by some officers that I thought was worth posting about.
