By now, everyone has heard about Charles Kinsey and the officer who shot him. Last Thursday morning, Twitter was blowing up with #CharlesKinsey trending, with over 37,000 tweets. By noon, I walked into the lunch room where I work and I could already hear the talk about what happened.
Charles Kinsey, a group home therapist, was unarmed and shot in North Miami. The video that’s been all over social media shows Charles Kinsey laying on the ground with his hands up in the air while trying to calm down an autistic patient. The police showed up to the scene after they received a call about a suicidal man with a gun. In the video, one can hear Charles Kinsley saying: “All he has is a toy truck. A toy truck. I’m a behavior therapist at a group home.” Despite Mr. Kinsley’s attempt at reassuring the police he was unarmed, he was still shot in the leg, and then handcuffed before he was taken to the hospital. This event has been all over social media, especially Twitter, and it just depicts how many citizens are beginning to lose their trust in the police -- epecially considering the fact the police officer stated he fired because he thought Charles Kinsley was in danger.
With all the recent protests that have been going on, many are beginning to question why nothing has been done to put a stop to police brutality. Things are getting so bad to the point where many are losing their trust on the system and are beginning to see the police as corrupt and abusive of their power.
How is it possible that a man, who was supposedly in danger, got mistakenly shot? Has the system come to the point were they do not even bother to invest in proper training for the officers? Since when is it OK for an officer to shoot the wrong person?
Can it be possible that what happened to Charles Kinsey is what the Black Lives Matter movement needed to prove -- that, yes, this is indeed a race issue and the media needs to stop making it seem as if every unjust shooting is justified. Because let's be honest here, every unjust shooting has been done without any real justification besides the fact that the cops who have been committing these shootings are just afraid of black people. Well, why are the cops afraid of black people?
Maybe because, for the longest time, the media continues to unjustly portray the black community as the community we should all be afraid of. The community that commits crimes and gets shot by police officers because they were being uncooperative. The community that always seems to have a criminal record.
The simple truth here is that Charles Kinsey did absolutely
nothing to get shot. He was cooperative, he was laying on the ground and he had his hands up in the air. The fact he was supposedly shot by accident is just an excuse. Not every cop is bad, and it's horrible that all cops have to pay for the atrocities the bad ones make. However, this isn't going to end until the media and the police force begins to hold the bad cops accountable for their actions. There would be no need to protect the cops if the bad ones were held accountable for their mistakes.
