Disclaimer: the video below was released by an attorney and doesn’t show his client (the man in the yellow shirt with arms raised) actually being shot. As such, we don’t know what, if anything, he may have done to cause the cops on the scene to open fire. That said, from what’s available here, no one sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement is going to to be mollified by this. To say the least.
As the Miami Herald reports:
When a 23-year-old autistic man carrying a toy truck wandered from a mental health center out into the street Monday, a worker there named Charles Kinsey went to retrieve him.
A few minutes later the autistic man was still sitting cross-legged blocking the roadway while playing with the small, rectangular white toy. And Kinsey was prone on the ground next to him — a bullet from an assault rifle fired by a police officer having struck his leg.
This all seems to have happened after the shots were fired:
According to the North Miami assistant chief of police,
…officers received a 911 call indicating a man was in the street with a gun threatening to kill himself. They responded to Northeast 127th Street and about 14th Avenue and began barking orders. When the autistic man didn’t comply, an officer fired three times, striking Kinsey once in the leg. He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Fortunately, Kinsey doesn’t appear to have been seriously injured. Other than that bullet in his leg, of course.
In an interview with WSVN-Channel 7, Kinsey said that after he was shot, officers approached and flipped him over and handcuffed him.
“Sir, there’s no need for firearms,” Kinsey told the news station he said to police before he was shot. “It was so surprising. It was like a mosquito bite.”
Kinsey said when he asked the officer why he fired his weapon, the cop responded, “I don’t know.
As you’d expect, the incident is under investigation. And if this report is accurate, the North Miami PD’s not proud of what happened.
By Wednesday, (Kinsey’s attorney Hilton) Napoleon said he was already negotiating a possible settlement with the city of North Miami.
“They realize this was something inappropriate regarding the shooting,” he said. “If police departments come out more and admit fault, that would probably go a long way,” toward improving relations with the public, he said.
Given recent events, it’s not unreasonable to expect beat cops to be cautious, if not downright nervous these days. But it appears that the cops involved are extremely fortunate that this incident didn’t result in one or two dead citizens.