THIS ONE IS GOING TO BE REAL HARD TO CLEAN UP

By Bob Walsh

This is the scenario. The North Miami (FLA) P. D. cops get a call of a possibly suicidal man with a gun. They show up and find two people in the middle of the street. One is a dumpy overweight white man who is autistic. He is playing with a toy truck. The other is a young black man, wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

The autistic white man has just wandered away from a nearby group home. The black guy is a behavior therapist from the group home. There is in fact no weapon, and nothing that even really looks like a weapon on the scene unless that was a really strange toy truck.

The cops start yelling. The black man hits the deck, on his back, with his hands straight up in the air. He is clearly not holding ANYTHING. He is interacting with the cops, telling them what is going on, and also trying to calm down the autistic guy.

So, a cop shoots the black guy. Once in the leg. He is now in the hospital. It is so far not real clear why the cop shot. Only one of the several cops present fired.

The local black community is highly pissed. Based on the very limited information available they might have a reason to be. There were numerous witnesses as this was a residential area. There is even some cell phone video, though the actual shooting was (allegedly) not recorded.

Clearly news reports and spotty cell phone video is not real great evidence. It sounds however like we maybe-probably have either an accidental-negligent discharge of a weapon or a grossly inappropriate discharge of a weapon by the officer.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This shooting looks bad, really bad! The defenders of the Thin Blue Line are going to have a hard time defending this cop,