Unbelivable: Unarmed Black Therapist Shot While Calming Autistic Man
That’s the response a Miami police officer gave Charles Kinsey — whose hands were up while assisting an autistic patient — when he asked why the officer opened fire. Will the latest police shooting finally force departments to reform how officers interact with citizens?
That’s the response the North Miami police officer gave to shooting victim Charles Kinsey, when he asked why the officer opened fire as he lay flat on the ground, hands outstretched to prove he was no threat to the police.
“I was thinking as long as I have my hands up … they’re not going to shoot me. This is what I’m thinking, they’re not going to shoot me. Wow, was I wrong,” Kinsey, 47, told WSVNfrom his hospital bed. The Miami Herald reports he suffered a bullet wound to the leg and is expected to be released from Jackson Memorial Hospital on Thursday.
Kinsey’s story is reminiscent of numerous shootings involving the police, in which an unarmed Black suspect is tragically shot and killed. Fortunately, Kinsey is still alive to tell his story, but the trauma of his experience will linger on.
As the July shooting deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, five Dallas officers, and three Baton Rouge cops stays top of mind, it presents a critical conversation for national law enforcement on policing in minority communities, with an added topic of mental health disparities among African-Americans and other disenfranchised groups.
What led up to the shooting began on Monday at the MacTown Panther Group Homes, where Kinsey works as a mental health counselor. He was called outside to retrieve an autistic patient who wandered into the street to play with a toy truck.
Kinsey was just doing his job when police arrived at the scene. Officers, on the other hand, say they received a call reporting an armed man was in the street, threatening to commit suicide.
Cell phone footage released Wednesday shows Kinsey trying to de-escalate the situation, telling his patient to be still and to lie down, while locked in an unthreatening position.
“I was more worried about him than myself,” Kinsey said, according to WSVN. The autistic patient’s name hasn’t been released.
North Miami Police Department’s spokeswoman Natalie Buissereth released the following statement: “Arriving officers attempted to negotiate with the two men on the scene, one of whom was later identified as suffering from autism… At some point during the on-scene negotiation, one of the responding officers discharged his weapon.”
After they shot him, officers rushed Kinsey, searched his body and handcuffed him.
“They flipped me over, and I’m faced down in the ground, with cuffs on, waiting on the rescue squad to come.” Kinsey said. “I’d say about 20, about 20 minutes it took the rescue squad to get there. And I was like, bleeding — I mean bleeding and I was like, ‘Wow.’”
Kinsey’s lawyer Hilton Napoleon told WSVN he’s livid. “There’s no justification for shooting an unarmed person who’s talking to you and telling you that they don’t have a gun, and that they’re a mental health counselor,” Napoleon said. The Herald reports Kinsey and Napoleon are in settlement talks with the city of North Miami.
Police are staying mum on the incident – they haven’t released the name of the responding officer who fired at Kinsey, but have placed him on administrative leave. In response, the state attorney is looking into the investigation, WSVN reports.
There have been no reports that a gun was found near the scene, according to The Miami Herald.
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Continue reading 108 Black Men And Boys Killed By Police
108 Black Men And Boys Killed By Police
UPDATED: 1:20 p.m. ET, April 15, 2021 --
Police shooting and killing Black males is all but a centuries-old American tradition among law enforcement in the U.S. But the fact that this apparent rite of police passage is still thriving in 2021 and only seems to be gaining momentum instead of slowing should give any American citizen pause as an increasing number of Black people -- especially males both young and old -- continue to be added to a growing list of victims with what seems like a new shooting every week.
MORE: #SayHerName: Black Women And Girls Killed By Police
Matthew Williams became the most recent Black male killed in an instance of preventable police violence when officers in Georgia said they shot him on April 12, 2021, because he had a knife. However, Williams' family rejects that narrative and has demanded the release of bodycam footage to verify police claims.
[caption id="attachment_4139462" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Matthew Williams and his mother. | Source: Twitter[/caption]
Williams died in his own home from the shooting.
The lawyer re[resenting the family said the police are actively engaged in trying "to cover up killing a man in his own home."
Local news outlet 11Alive reported that a witness said Williams was not armed with a knife when he was shot.
One of Williams's five sisters said the police narrative is totally out of character for her brother.
"My brother was not violent. My brother was not confrontational," Chyah Williams said. "He was the most caring, giving, selfless person you could ever meet."
https://twitter.com/ArianaTriggs/status/1382444831910334464?s=20
Williams' killing came one day after a 20-year-old Black man named Daunte Wright was shot and killed during a traffic stop that centered on the number of air fresheners hanging from a car's rearview mirror.
Williams and Wright join a long list of other Black men and boys killed by the police, including but certainly not limited to: Tamir Rice; Botham Shem Jean; E.J. Bradford; and Michael Brown. But two of the most recent names that can tragically be included in this deadly equation are Michael Dean, a 28-year-old father who police shot in the head on Dec. 3, 2019, and Jamee Johnson, a 22-year-old HBCU student who police shot to death after a questionable traffic stop on Dec. 14, 2019.
One of the most distressing parts of this seemingly nonstop string of police killings of Black people is the fact that more times than not, the officer involved in the shooting can hide behind the claim that they feared for their lives -- even if the victim was shot in the back, as has become the case for so many deadly episodes involving law enforcement. In a handful of those cases -- such as Antwon Rose, a 13-year-old boy killed in Pittsburgh, and Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old killed in Sacramento, both of whom were unarmed -- the officers either avoided being criminally charged altogether or were acquitted despite damning evidence that the cops' lives were not threatened and there was no cause for them to resort to lethal force or any violence for that matter.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has been retained in so many of these cases, described the above scenarios in his new book, "Open Season," as the "genocide" of Black people.
As NewsOne continues covering these shootings that so often go ignored by mainstream media, the below running list (in no certain order) of Black men and boys who have been shot and killed by police under suspicious circumstances can serve as a tragic reminder of the dangers Black and brown citizens face upon being born into a world of hate that has branded them as suspects since birth.
Scroll down to learn more about the Black men and boys who have lost their lives to police violence.