Korryn Gaines shot by police full video. My surprising reaction. Feel free to share and comment. Learn everything a cop knows (book) http://amzn.to/2aZk81u
It began with police issuing an arrest warrant for traffic violations. But by the time it was over, after an hours-long standoff, Korryn Gaines was dead and a 5-year-old boy was shot, sustaining non-life-threatening injuries.
It’s not exactly clear what happened during that hours-long standoff. Police have not said, for one, whether it was Gaines — a 23-year-old black woman who was allegedly carrying a shotgun — or the officers who shot the 5-year-old during a shootout. It’s also not clear if there is any video of the events as they unfolded.
But news of the shooting has already quickly led to outrage, particularly from the Black Lives Matter movement and other activists who fight racial disparities in the criminal justice system. To many critics, it is just another example of an issue that quickly rose to the national spotlight after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
The police shooting of Korryn Gaines: what we know Three officers were serving an arrest warrant on Gaines — over traffic violations — at around 9:20 am Monday morning at an apartment in Randallstown, Maryland, according to Baltimore County police.
Police said Gaines barricaded herself with a shotgun at an apartment. For hours, police said they tried to talk her down. But, they said, Gaines repeatedly threatened the police and aimed her gun at them. At around 3 pm, she allegedly said, "If you don’t leave, I’m going to kill you."
An officer fired his weapon once, according to police. Gaines returned fire. Police then opened fire. By the time it was over, Gaines was dead and the 5-year-old boy, whom an uncle identified as Gaines’s son to the Baltimore Sun, was injured.
The boy is expected to survive. The officers involved may go on administrative leave as the shooting is investigated.
Police also said that a male suspect, who had a warrant for assault, tried to flee the apartment with a one-year-old child during the standoff. Police apprehended him.
"We are of course extremely upset at an event like this," police spokesperson Elise Armacost said at press conference, according to NBC News. "We do not like to be in a position of having to use lethal force, but this was a situation where our officers exercised patience for hours and hours."
SO FAR, WE ONLY KNOW WHAT POLICE HAVE SAID ABOUT THE SHOOTING
According to the Baltimore Sun, Gaines had told police in a previous traffic stop that cops would have to "murder" her to get her out of her vehicle. The police report said Gaines had a cardboard sign on her car that stated, "Any Government official who compromises this pursuit to happiness and right to travel will be held criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right or freedom." This sounds a lot like what sovereign citizens argue — that they are entirely free from a government’s laws because the laws violate innate rights.
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In that report, police also said that they had to call a tow truck to pick up Gaines’s car, which had no record of license plates or a required emissions check. As they waited, Gaines allegedly put two children that were in the vehicle on her lap. When police arrested her, "they had to remove the infant from her arms and physically pull her out of the car," Colin Campbell reported for the Baltimore Sun. That is somewhat similar to what police said happened at Gaines’s apartment with the five-year-old boy.
So far, we only know what police have said about the shooting and her record. For many Black Lives Matter activists, this is as good as knowing nothing. Trust in the police is fairly low in black communities to begin with. But over the past few years, several police accounts of shootings or killings have also fallen apart when interrogated with video evidence — making it especially hard for activists and protesters to take cops at their word.
The Gaines story is also, in some ways, frighteningly familiar. In several of the police shootings over the past few years — most recently the shooting of Philando Castile — America has heard of otherwise normal stops escalating out of control. This stop began with an arrest warrant for a traffic violation — and ended up with a woman dead and a 5-year-old child shot.
Black people are much more likely to be killed by police than their white peers.
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