The continuing execution of blacks in America

 

22 October 2016 –  Jesus wept …

A woman.

An elderly woman.

A mentally ill elderly woman.

A mentally ill elderly woman with a baseball bat.

A mentally ill elderly woman with a baseball bat having a breakdown.

A mentally ill elderly woman with a baseball bat having a breakdown should be taken to the hospital for a medical intervention and treated with care and compassion.

This is common sense.

If I saw a 66-year-old woman having a mental health crisis and she picked up a bat, I would not shoot and kill her. I wouldn’t shoot her in the leg. I damn sure wouldn’t shoot her repeatedly until she died.

That’s exactly what NYPD Sgt. Hugh Barry did on Tuesday evening when he shot and killed Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old Bronx woman with a long history of mental illness and breakdowns requiring interventions.

Her neighbors knew she was unstable. The police had visited her home on many prior calls.

That a cop shot and killed this woman is absolutely preposterous. While I am encouraged that NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill suggested it was a bad shooting when he said, “We do have policies and procedures for emotionally disturbed people and it appears those procedures weren’t followed,” I also know that Officer Daniel Pantaleo applied a banned chokehold on Eric Garner before killing him.

Pantaleo is an NYPD officer to this very day.

Barry was armed with a Taser, but didn’t use it. Any available option would’ve been better than what he did.

He didn’t think the baseball bat was an assault rifle.

He didn’t think her purse was a bomb.

He didn’t think her cell phone was a gun.

He shot and killed Deborah Danner because that’s what police seem to have been taught they should do the moment they get scared.

In 2015, at least 1,207 people were killed by police in the U.S. and not a single officer was convicted the entire year. Zero.

So, of course Barry must have thought he could get away with this shooting. What in the world would make him think otherwise?

And, of course, not a single NYPD officer has a body camera. In a city which prides itself on innovation, everything about the killing of Deborah Danner looks and feels like an old fashion firing squad.

This is not OK — not at all.