“…when it hit me I had my hands in the air, and I’m thinking I just got shot!” Kinsey told WSVN. “And I’m saying, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me were, ‘I don’t know.’”

Video Shows Unarmed Black Man Pleading With Arms Raised Before Getting Shot by Police

Clearly the officer had no business being in that uniform or holding that gun. Fire him and jail him. NOW.

Authorities say a Florida police officer shot and wounded an autistic man’s caretaker following reports of a man threatening to shoot himself. 

…Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon, provided a cellphone video to the Herald on Wednesday taken moments before the shooting. It shows Kinsey lying in the middle of the street with his hands up, asking the officers not to shoot him, while the autistic man sits next to him, yelling at him to “shut up.”

Police shoot autistic man’s caretaker as he lies in street

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
“Reports” my ass.
The officer in question needs to be fired, stripped of his pension, and jailed.
Period.

In a vacuum, it isn’t natural to pre-emptively shoot people to death, just as, in a vacuum, it isn’t natural to keep your gun trained on a person who has been rendered incapacitated and is bleeding out before you. This is specialized behavior, the sort expected from military forces entering unfamiliar war zones. Soldiers are trained to consider everyone and everything a potential threat, to neutralize any man, woman or child who could potentially cause them harm. The highest priorities are to protect themselves and to accomplish their mission, and that requires the trained dehumanization of the local population. In such an environment, the burden of not killing is lifted from the soldiers, and local people are tasked with the burden of not provoking death.

…The nation’s thruways are not war zones. In a vacuum, police officers shouldn’t kill the very citizens they swear to protect. But the police, especially officers who commute to patrol communities not their own, are — or can act very much like — an occupying force. You can see their training at work when an officer fires into a car with a 4-year-old child in it. You can see it when Reynolds is directed to get out of the car, lift her hands over her head and walk backward toward a group of officers: Her camera glimpses several guns aimed squarely at her back.

… Reynolds knows to de-escalate the situation by being reassuring, even encouraging, to the man who just shot her boyfriend. She knows that her boyfriend is likely to die. She knows to document everything, to give her own accounting of events, to create a record. She knows what will come next.

…There’s a specific cadence to cop killings. State violence is so ubiquitous and visible that citizens, experienced, can recognize its approach.

…We know what comes next. Both Castile and Sterling will be further dehumanized; their pasts will be pillaged, and attempts will be made to recast both victims as the gunmen, the aggressors who brought their deaths upon themselves. The officers will argue that both shootings were in keeping with their training — that, in effect, they accomplished their mission. The police officers may even get off. They normally do.

How the Police See Us, and How They Train Us to See Them – The New York Times

This. Every fucking single word of this.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced an effort to pass legislation that would increase the criminal penalties for assaults against police officers and classify attacks directed at police as a hate crime.

Abbott calls for assaults on police to be considered hate crimes | www.statesman.com

I’m all for that, as long as (and only if!!!) officers face the exact same penalties for unlawful and unwarranted use of force. A crime against the citizenry you are sworn to protect IS a hate crime.