National Public Radio (NPR) reported on the 25th that an investigation found that since 2015, American police have shot and killed at least 135 unarmed black men and women. NPR reviewed police, court and other records to investigate the details of these cases, which revealed that at least 75% of the officers involved were white. The most recent police shooting occurred this month in Killeen, Texas, when a police officer shot and killed a 52-year-old man who sought mental health help.
NPR found that this is not the first time that at least 15 police officers have been involved in a shooting incident, and it will not be the last time. Some officers have been involved in two, sometimes three or more shootings, often fatal, with no consequences.
reported that in February 2018, Vallejo, California police officer Ryan McMahon had a dispute with Foster, a black man who was on community supervision for car theft crimes. During the fierce struggle between the two, seven gunshots suddenly rang out, and the 33-year-old Foster fell to the ground dying.
At the time, District Attorney Abrams declined to bring charges against McMahon, a white officer. He believed that Foster's shooting was justified, that Foster "posed a direct and extreme threat" to McMahon, and that "Officer McMahon's self-defense and shooting of Foster was objectively reasonable."
Reports say Ronel Foster was unarmed when he was shot and killed by police
A year later, Officer McMahon fired again. This time, the person killed was the up-and-coming black rapper Willie McCoy. At 11pm on February 9, 2019, McCoy was sleeping in a silver Mercedes-Benz CLS500 outside a restaurant. An employee called 911 to report that McCoy was slumped over the steering wheel, blocking car access. When McMahon and six other officers arrived, one of the officers found a semiautomatic handgun in McCoy's lap.
When McCoy slowly woke up, he moved his hands and scratched his chest, according to an expert hired by the city to review the shooting. Officers thought he was trying to get a gun, so they fired 55 times in 3.5 seconds. McMahon said he opened fire after believing police and residents were in "imminent danger." Officials also exonerated him. A department official later said McMahon violated department policy by "engaging in unsafe conduct and neglecting basic gun safety" during the shooting and was fired in September.
McMahon said in an interview: "This is a very sad situation, and I am still dealing with it. It has not gone away."
reported that in the past few years, fatal shootings of unarmed black men and women by American police have increasingly attracted worldwide attention. In 2014, the killing of Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a week of protests and thrust the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement into the national spotlight. Since then, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country to protest against brutality against black people by police officers, who are mostly white.
People who study deadly police force say it is unusual for U.S. police officers to be involved in any shooting. Peter Scharf, a professor at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health, a criminologist and co-author of Badges and Bullets: Police Use of Deadly Weapons, "Many police officers never fire a gun in their entire career, sometimes without drawing a gun at all. Shooting is rare."
NPR found that of the 135 deaths, 30 verdicts and settlements totaled more than $142 million, with more cases pending. It is rare for police officers to be charged. In more than 80 cases, police officers were not charged. However, the report found that in 33 homicides, officers resigned or were fired. In the past five years, only 13 officers involved have been charged with murder. Two of them have been convicted and seven cases are pending. Seven people were charged with manslaughter and two were found guilty.
(Editor: GH)
