Prosecutors charged a Florida police officer on Wednesday in the shooting last July of an unarmed black man who was seen on cellphone video lying in a street with his hands in the air at the time he was shot in the leg.
North Miami Police Department officer Jonathan Aledda was charged with attempted manslaughter, a felony, and culpable negligence, a misdemeanor, according to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office.
The shooting of behavioral therapist Charles Kinsey, who was with and caring for a severely autistic man when he was shot, was one in a series of police shootings of black men across the United States to raise questions about police use of force and civil rights.
Aledda defended his actions last July, saying “I did what I had to do in a split second.” The Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association, which is representing Aledda, was not immediately available for comment.
The officer was responding to reports of a man with a gun and apparently was aiming at the autisic man when he shot Kinsey, according to an affidavit supporting the arrest warrant filed with the state court for Miami-Dade County.
Kinsey had followed police commands and was lying on the ground at the time he was shot. He had been trying to get the autistic man back to a nearby group home from which he had wandered. Hilton Napoleon, a lawyer for Kinsey, was not immediately available for comment.
Initial calls to 911 emergency dispatchers reported a man, possibly suicidal, with a gun in his hand, which led to the arrival of 16 police officers, including Aledda. What a caller thought was a gun turned out to be a toy tanker truck held by the autistic man, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit said the autistic man, who is now 27 and has an IQ of 40, needed around-the-clock supervision.
In a video widely shared on social media, Kinsey can be heard yelling, “All he has is a toy truck in his hands.”
The affidavit said Aledda fired three shots using his personally owned Colt M4 Carbine rifle from about 150 feet (45 meters) where Kinsey lay.
“No other officer on the scene observed (the autistic man) exhibit any behavior that compelled them to shoot,” the affidavit says.
(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Andrew Hay)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-miami-shooting-idUSKBN17E2WT
I’m going to shoot from the hip here without fully reading the article.
Let me guess….
The person of interest was BLACK.
The guy was unArmed….
Which means he only had black legs and black feet to defend himself.
This aggression will not stand people.
From a behavioral colleague to another….
This is “bad” behavior.
But look at the bright side…
He could have been a gay anger management counselor.
Prescribing oxicontin for… gay black sexual favours.
*** The affidavit said Aledda fired three shots using his personally owned Colt M4 Carbine rifle from about 150 feet (45 meters) where Kinsey lay. ***
I own a Colt M4, too. But unlike that pig, I actually know how to use it. Hell, I can shoot a pistol far more accurately than he was able to shoot his rifle in this incident. He was only 45 meters away, yet he STILL missed his intended target and shot the wrong person. (Not that either person was a legitimate target here.)
Folks, this sort of pig incompetence with weapons is not uncommon. Even police firearms instructors have admitted this on the Web. Take heart from it, but don’t let it make you overconfident. Just resolve to be much better than those scum are:
1. Buy high-quality weapons with a proven track record (like the Colt), and practice obsessively, even if it’s mostly dry-fire.
2. Hold yourself to demanding but realistic standards of marksmanship: e.g., reliably hit an 8″ paper plate at 50 yards with a pistol, and much smaller targets at longer distances with a rifle. Once you can do these easily, set even tougher standards for yourself and work to meet those.
3. If you’re fat like most Americans, GET IN SHAPE with diet and exercise. If you need to lose weight, success is about 90% diet and 10% exercise. Fat people should limit their calories to about 1500 per day (yes, you’ll be hungry a lot — deal with it) and only eat natural food. Lift weights and/or do push-ups, pull-ups, and leg work so you don’t lose muscle while dieting.
Hard work? Yes. But it can be fun, too. And you’ll be doing it so you can better stand up for what YOU believe in.
He’ll plead out, get a slap on the wrist, resign from the department, and get hired by another one.