Only in Amerika: The horror of killing a 1 year old over shoplifting allegations
What a horrifying story…
Police shooting of a 1-year-old Mississippi boy ignites tension between police and Black residents
Jackson, MississippiAP — The fatal shooting of a 1-year-old boy by police who were responding to a shoplifting call this week has ignited simmering tensions between police and Black residents in the small town of Senatobia, Mississippi.
The death of Kohen Wiley is the latest in a series of troubling encounters with police that have outraged community members in recent years. It has led to protests and calls for greater police accountability in the town of 8,000, with some civil rights activists pointing to Kohen’s death as another example of a Black life lost over something of nominal value — in this case, allegedly stolen diapers.“We are treating items on a shelf as more valuable than a child,” Bernice King, the daughter of civil right icon Martin Luther King, Jr., said in a statement posted to Instagram on Wednesday. “That is not just bad policing; it is a moral collapse.”
Differing accounts of what happened
There are still many unanswered questions about the shooting and what led up to it.
Senatobia police responded to the shoplifting call at a local Walmart on Sunday, where they found two women and a child leaving the store, getting into a car and driving away. According to a statement released by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation: “Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one. An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene.”
Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, said her son and her friend, who was driving, were hit by gunfire. In a video posted on social media Wednesday by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, Wiley said her friend was not driving toward the officers because they were “all on the right side and she was driving towards the left.”
She also disputes the shoplifting claim, saying in the video that she believes her friend paid for the diapers she was carrying.
AP
…what can you even say?
That mere disobedience makes opening fire on people for shoplifting somehow acceptable to American Policing is a product of culture, that shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Respect my Authority is as American as fast food, wrestling and opioid addiction.
The killing of a 1 year old for shoplifting is an almost IDF level disproportional response.
Right now in NZ we are expanding our prison system to fill with shoplifters after technical changes to sentencing.
Imprisoning shoplifters is barely one step up from the 18th century poorhouses.
The never ending grind of unbridled Police state power.
What a traumatic and terrible moment.
“Defund the police” is often used as a sarcastic conservative epithet. But there are probably places in the US which would be better off with a damn sight less policing. Let’s face it, if these people had been white – they’d still be alive. Cops just shot a white man in the US because they thought he was black. You couldn’t make this shit up.