 "Dallas police move to detains a driver after several police officers were shot in downtown Dallas. Snipers apparently shot police officers during protests and some of the officers are dead, the city's police chief said in a statement.")
The July 6 killing of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, is just the latest in a string of controversial police action against non-whites in a country lauded the world over for voting the first African American as its President. One would have thought racial hate would have plateaued, if not subsided, after Barack Obama took over. But there is evidence to the contrary as seen from the following cases:
Eric Courtney Harris
The 44-year-old was shot dead on April 2, 2015, during an undercover sting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, while running away unarmed from authorities. According to reports, Robert Bates, the officer who pulled the trigger, mistook his personal weapon, a Smith & Wesson revolver, for a Model X26 Taser, and shot Harris in the back when he was on the ground. A Taser is a en electroshock weapon that is designed to incapacitate a suspect, instead of killing him. Bates was convicted of manslaughter.
Sureshbhai Patel
The 57-year-old Indian, who was visiting his son in Madison, Alabama, was seriously injured and left partially paralysed after being confronted by the police for allegedly suspicious behaviour in a residential neighborhood. Film footage from two police dashboard cameras shows officer Eric Parker slamming Patel, who doesn't know English, to the ground after he fails to answer questions posed to him. The incident lead to outrage among the citizens and sparked official protests from New Delhi. Parker has been sacked from the Madison Police Department and charged with third-degree assault.
Tamir Rice. Photo: Wikipedia
The 12-year-old African American boy, was shot to death by two police officers on November 22, 2014, in Cleveland, Ohio. The officers had responded to a police dispatch call "of a male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people" in a city park. The caller stated twice that the gun was "probably fake" and that the suspect was "probably a juvenile." The officers claim Rice reached for a gun as they arrived. One of them fired two shots within two seconds of arriving on the scene, fatally wounding Rice, whose gun was later found to be a toy, though it did not have the orange safety feature signifying that it wasn't real. It was later reported that the officer who pulled the trigger had been deemed unfit for duty in his previous job as a policeman in Independence, Ohio.
Akai Gurley
The 28-year-old African American was shot dead on November 20, 2014, in Brooklyn, New York City, by a New York City Police Department officer. Two policemen, patrolling stairwells in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)'s Louis H. Pink Houses, entered a dark, unlit stairwell. Gurley and his girlfriend entered the seventh-floor stairwell, 14 steps below them. One of the officer fired his gun, the bullet ricocheted off the wall and Gurley was struck in the chest and later died from the shot. The policeman who pulled the trigger was later indicted for manslaughter, assault, and other criminal charges.
Ezell Ford
The 25-year-old African-American succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds delivered by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers on August 11, 2014. The officers claim the unarmed victim had attacked them and tried to grab one of their guns when they fired in self-defence. Some eyewitnesses offered different accounts of the events surrounding the shooting, and an investigation to determine whether the officers' actions were justified is ongoing.
Michael Brown
The 18-year-old black was fatally shot by a white policeman on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Darren Wilson, who pulled the trigger had been notified of a robbery Brown had just committed at a convenience store. Wilson challenged Brown and an accomplice as they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic, blocked their path with his cruiser and got into a tussle with Brown that ended with a gunshot. Brown and his friend then fled, with Wilson on Brown's tail. When Brown stopped and turned to face the officer, he was shot as many as 12 times on the front. Brown was unarmed.
John Crawford III. Photo: Wikipedia
In a case remniscent of Tamir Rice, the 22-year-old black man succumbed to gunshot wounds delivered by police officers on August 5, 2014, in a Walmart store near Dayton, Ohio. He was holding a toy BB gun he had just picked up at the store. The tragedy followed a call by another customer to 911, who claimed Crawford was pointing the gun at people and loading the gun. The caller later categorically denied the assertion. The two officers who killed Crawford, claim Crawford defied oral commands to drop the toy gun and lie on the ground. Believing the toy air-rifle was for real, one of them fired two shots. The shooting, which was captured by the store's security video camera, showed Crawford was talking on his cellphone while holding the BB/pellet air rifle in his left hand.
Eric Garner
The African-American, who was accused by the police of selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island, New York, died after a police officer put him in a chokehold, a tactic that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) prohibits the use of. When Garner resisted arrest, one officer wrapped his arm around his neck and pulled him backwards and down to the ground. Four other officers moved to restrain Garner, who repeated "I can't breathe" eleven times, lying facedown on the sidewalk. Garner soon lost consciousness, and was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital approximately an hour later. Medical examiners confirmed the death was due to the chokehold.
Andy Lopez
The fatal shooting of a 13-year-old hispanic by Sonoma County police on October 22, 2013, in Santa Rosa, California, was triggered because the victim was carrying an airsoft gun that resembled an AK-47. Lopez succumbed to injuries from as many as seven gunshot wounds inflicted on him. The officer who fired claimed he mistook the toy gun for a real firearm, as it did not have the orange tip that is a legal requirement for all toy guns for import.
Trayvon Martin. Photo: Wikipedia
The 17-year-old African American had gone with his father to visit the latter's fiancée. On February 26, 2012, while returning from a convenience store he'd visited to buy candy and juice, he walked past a neighborhood that had been seen several robberies that year. George Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, spotted him, alerted the Sanford Police, and then followed Martin on foot to keep a tab on his movements. Moments later, there was an altercation between the two in which Martin was shot in the chest. Zimmerman, who was injured in the fracas, was not charged at the time of the shooting, on the ground that there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense. Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried in Martin's death but was later acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
William Corey Jackson
On May 20, 2011, police were making a planned traffic stop, when one officer ask the passengers to get out of the vehicle. He saw William Corey Jackson in the backseat who did not get out though the other two did. The officer fired multiple shots in the window, claiming he had seen a gun. Investigation later revealed the vehicle was stopped because occupants were wanted in questioning in an incident where a woman's purse was stolen.
Footnote
According to one study conducted in 2015, young black males were at nine times the risk faced by other Americans, of being killed by the police. This conclusion was drawn from an analysis of as many as 1,134 deaths that took place at the hands of law keepers that year.
One estimate pegs the number of unarmed blacks killed the police in 2015 at 102, or almost two cases per week. Of these, only 10 cases saw charges being framed against the officers involved and only two culminated in convictions.
African Americans make up just two per cent of the population in the United States. Yet, in 2015, this segment accounted more than 15 per cent of all deaths that were a result of police action, making them five times more susceptible than white Americans in the same age bracket.
