I didn't intent to watch this video. I did though, and the sight of a man so terrified of the police that he tried to run off on legs that no longer existed, and that the law enforcement people there saw no other solution to his existence than to shoot him multiple times, is so horrific to me I want to shut down my mind.Videos purportedly capturing the moments before the shooting death of a double-amputee man holding a knife after a stabbing attack are raising questions about whether police used excessive force in Huntington Park, California https://t.co/Gt6GUBfpsc pic.twitter.com/0WCf7xfRPI
— CNN (@CNN) February 2, 2023
They did this even though there was no way they could have believed that this handicapped man could throw a butcher knife at them with artery-piercing accuracy and ninja-like speed.
I saw this, and the unreality of seeing it, a man so clearly harmless, so clearly being killed because of some weird idea of the threat he posed--not anything realistic, is just going to haunt me forever.
Knowing he lost his legs in a previous interaction with law enforcement is so horrific. It informs our understanding of the trauma he faced, once again being in the crosshairs of the police. Why he tried to flee on the memory of the limbs he once had.
I don't know how what I saw is fixable--I only know it has to be.
1 comment:
White Society (writ large) is okay with this, thus it continues. Police Violence against Americans is seen by many as a problem that doesn't affect them, much the way Nixon and Reagan convinced America that drugs was a Those People problem... until... "regular" Americans saw the damage wrought upon them with the War on Drugs, and sought to change it. Unfortunately, the Police are increasingly becoming an uncontrollable force in the United States convinced that politicians and society being too lax and not allowing them to be more violent and draconian is the problem.
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