Unarmed Black Man Shot by Police! Haven't we seen this before...all too often?!

[Peter Lemkin]

Police Have A New One: Caretaking An Autistic Patient While Black

by
Abby Zimet, staff writer

21 Comments

Man. Even as Repubs shamelessly fan the flames of a divided nation, police in North Miami shot an unarmed black behavioral therapist trying to calm an agitated autistic patient playing with a toy truck, even though the caregiver was lying on the ground with both arms in the air. Therapist Charles Kinsey was trying to quiet the patient, who had run away from a group home, when cops showed up after a reported 911 call about someone threatening to commit suicide. Cell phone video captures the therapist and patient in the middle of the road; cops point their guns at them as Kinsey clearly identifies the white man as his patient, tries to quiet him - "Rinaldo, please be still...Sit down, Rinaldo. Lay on your stomach" - explains the man only has a toy truck and vainly insists to police, "Sir, there's no need for firearms." Because this is America - motto: Shoot First, Think Later But Only Maybe - a cop then shot three times, hitting Kinsey in the leg.
"I was really more worried about (the patient) than myself," Kinsey recalled later at the hospital. "I was thinking as long as I have my hands up, they're not going to shoot me... Wow, was I wrong." After he was shot, three cops flipped him face down on the ground, put cuffs on him, and left him bleeding for 20 minutes in the road while a rescue squad was called. Cell phone video by an onlooker captures the moments before and after the shooting; at the end, the person filming muses, "Why they shoot the black boy and not the fat boy?" Wednesday evening the Circle of Brotherhood, a local group that includes Kinsey and works to solve community problems, gathered outside the Police Department to demand answers. Police will only say they are investigating. Really? Perhaps they should investigate what's going on right now at the fear-mongering, hate-fostering, us-vs-them-themed GOP confab. Or maybe investigate these telling intern selfies of two world views and what each says about an inclusiveness that rejects the lethal concept of "the other" to focus on our shared humanity, thus making less likely the pointless, panicked shooting of innocent people, helping others, in the street.