“A disturbing cellphone video of a St. Louis police shooting has sparked some concern as protests in nearby Ferguson over the controversial killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown entered an 11th day.
The video of the Tuesday killing, released by the St. Louis Police Department on Wednesday, shows a man in a blue jacket acting erratically and cursing at pedestrians as he paces around a pair of soda cans.
Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, prompting hundreds to protest in the streets.
The narrator of the video [warning: disturbing content and profanity] suggests the man stole the drinks from a nearby convenience store. Police arrive on scene a short time later.”* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
*Read more here from James Queally / LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-stl-police-shooting-video-20140820-story.html
Comments
In Ireland the knife carrier would be disarmed by the police using unarmed restraint techniques. He would have been arrested without being shot or tazared. Simple restraint techniques is all that is required from a well trained professional police force.
“Simple restraint techniques is all that is required from a well trained professional police force.”
That’s the problem. For so many police officers in the U.S., lethal force is no longer the last resort. The officers in the shooting discussed in the article above were equipped with tasers, yet had guns drawn before they even got out of the vehicle. Kajieme Powell was dead 23 seconds into his “interaction” with the officers.
Police in the U.S. are all too willing to completely unload the entire clip of multiple officers when black men are involved, and the obviousness of that tragedy seems to be lost on far too many Americans, even after these two killings happened within a week of each other, just a couple miles apart.