I’m honestly wondering if there has been some generational and/or cultural shift in police enforcement in the past decade. We have been inundated, especially in the past several years, with story after story of police injuring or killing people, particularly people of color. Police violence has always been with us to some extent. If you recall Spike Lee’s movie from the 80’s, “Just Do The Right Thing,” that was dedicated to Black victims of police violence.
The senseless killing of George Floyd finally opened the floodgates of public passion and that was followed shortly by the killing of Daunte Wright. The police officers in both instances were charged criminally and convicted. And now it looks like another case, more egregious than Daunte Wright and almost as bad as George Floyd has just taken place in Grand Rapids, Michigan with the killing of 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya.
***TRIGGER WARNING, GRAPHIC*****
Here are some other videos of the incident.
The videos released on Wednesday show Mr. Lyoya driving through a residential area on the cold, rainy morning of April 4 when an officer pulls him over. Mr. Lyoya steps out of his car, the videos show, and appears confused as the officer tells him to get back in the car. The officer asks Mr. Lyoya whether he speaks English.
Mr. Lyoya responds that he does speak English, and asks, “What did I do wrong?” After a brief exchange about whether Mr. Lyoya has a driver’s license, the officer grabs Mr. Lyoya, who pulls away and starts to run, the video footage shows.
The officer tackles Mr. Lyoya in a nearby lawn, yelling “Stop!” as Mr. Lyoya appears to try to regain his footing. At one point, body camera footage shows Mr. Lyoya grasping for the Taser that is in the officer’s hand. Chief Winstrom said he believed that the Taser was fired twice during the encounter, but that it did not hit anyone.
Midway through the struggle, the officer’s body camera stops filming. Chief Winstrom said pressure was applied to the camera to turn it off during the struggle. It was not clear who applied that pressure or whether it was intentional.
Other cameras — from the officer’s vehicle, a nearby doorbell security system and a bystander’s cellphone — capture different portions of the encounter. Shortly before the fatal shot is fired, the officer yells, “Let go of the Taser.” Mr. Lyoya is facing the ground and pushing up, with the officer on top of him, in the moments just before the shooting.
Chief Winstrom called the shooting a tragedy but declined to say whether he thought the officer followed department policy or state law, citing the investigations into the case. The officer is on paid leave and his police powers have been suspended, officials said.
He’s on paid leave for executing a man in the street. It goes without saying that people are howling mad.
Protestors marching through the streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan tonight in the name of Patrick Lyoya, who was shot and killed by police. #PatrickLyoya pic.twitter.com/2nEmzf4OSK
— Omar Jimenez (@OmarJimenez) April 13, 2022
This began over a traffic stop for mismatched registration, though police would not elaborate on why his plates were being scanned in the first place. Lyoya starts running after being pulled over. The chase and ensuing officer tackle began what became a fatal chain of events.
— Omar Jimenez (@OmarJimenez) April 13, 2022
The factor that all these killings have in common is the immediate escalation to lethal force. Nowhere is there a normal discussion about plate registration, expired registration, whatever the issue may have been. This is always how it goes, straight to violence and then to death, with no normal procedure of any kind in between. It’s understandably why POCs feel profiled and victimized.
I read an article some years ago that predicted future sub-par policing due to low pay, long hours and low morale,…….and as a result, there will be a severe shortage of qualified applicants to law enforcement.
……and here we are.
Of course, the right-wingers are going to ignore any reason to hold the cop responsible and just do their usual “blame the victim” deal.
This is a main reason that the whole “defund the police” issue was handled wrongly. Democrats/progressives/whatever identity needed to press the issue in a “Hold the police RESPONSIBLE” manner. The system as it stands almost always protects the cop (or cops) whenever something goes wrong which itself is wrong. You or I–even in a clear-cut case of justifiable homicide–would be required to go through the system. Likely starting with a day or two IN JAIL awaiting the possibility of bail and a thorough investigation of the events and, more likely than not, having to go through a trial UNLESS the police found overwhelming evidence that we took any and all necessary steps before killing the other person. Cops, on the other hand, face an “internal” investigation (usually by other cops) that generally takes the cop’s memory as gospel (or has someone–typically another cop–kind of help “jog” the cop’s memory) and only occasionally does the cop have to face a full-on court date in front of a jury that gets reminded (repeatedly) of how “dangerous” a job the cop has and that he only gets a “split-second” to make a “judgment” and that he shouldn’t be punished for “doing his (incredibly dangerous) job”; of course, the cop’s lawyers will do their best to turn the (usually) dead victim’s entire life into some sort of heinous criminal existence because, how else do you explain that the cop “was forced” to shoot him? “Good” people NEVER get into trouble with the law (even though we’ve seen plenty of cases where “good” Black people wind up dead at the hands of law enforcement through no fault of their own, beyond their heightened melanin).
You should take a look at where “judges” fit into the scheme. Those are the ASSHOLES that have let this happen.
Look at those scum bags first. They appear to be making the most money from having unqualified losers policing us.
They let cops get away with making a mockery of the court system by lying their asses off in court and then the lazy, incompetent and mentally unfit “judges” let them get away murdering people for “expediency” using that qualified immunity bullshit.
The police hired a bunch of military vets that have no skills and little education but are trained to kill because you just cannot get a decent paying job at local factories anymore because if you happened to notice, they all went over to china.
Like Ross Perot said in 1992, “that giant sucking sound you will hear will be the jobs leaving america”.
Now, those same losers are forcing us to buy unproven electric cars, if you can afford one, made in china. And that aint all…. it looks like 20 years of endless war as a jobs program didnt work as expected.
Just like signing nafta….