Thirty-six year old African-American man Kevin Allen was shot dead by police in Lyndhurst, New Jersey on Friday 29 May.
Kevin was shot in a public library after apparently resisting arrest for violating his probation and pulling out a knife. Police have released a report claiming that officers had “no choice” but to shoot Kevin after “pepper spray and officers' batons had failed to subdue him”. But nobody is likely to lie still and calm after being pepper sprayed!
The idea that the police, with all the force at their disposal, could not “subdue” a man in a small library room, housed in the same building as the police station, is absurd. Yet we hear the same story as with so many other murders of black people at the hands of the police — they had a weapon, they ran away, they resisted arrest. So we shot them.
According to a Guardian investigation 464 people have been killed by police in America so far this year. 102 of those were unarmed. 31.9% were black and 25.4% were Hispanic/Latino.
The report also highlights several more recent killings. With Nehmiah Fischer, a 35-year-old pastor from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and William Chapman, a 18-year-old man from Virginia being amongst the most recent.
William was shot dead by Stephen Rankin, a white police officer who had been suspending from street patrols for three years after fatally shooting another unarmed man, and had been disciplined for posting violent remarks and Nazi images online.
So many of the 464 deaths catalogued by the Guardian never reached national or international media, never received the same deserved outrage as the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott.
Sergio Navas, Monique Deckard, Louis Becker, Richard Weaver, A'donte Washington, Kendre Alston, Richard Davis, Celin Nunez, Philip Garcia, Luis Martin Chavez-Diaz, Alejandro Salazar and many more.
A Texas police officer has been suspended after a video emerged online showing him breaking up a pool party aggressively and drawing his gun.
Officers were called to the party after reports of a fight. They claim the incident involved “multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave”. The video shows an officer chasing young people, loosing his torch, which is then returned by some other attendees at the party before the first officer shouts “on the ground! I told you to stay! Get your asses on the ground. I told you to stay!” at those returning his torch.
The officer is then seen forcing a number of teenagers to lie on a grass verge and ignoring their concerns. One girl is wrestled to the ground violently, and when others complain the officer pulls out his gun.
It seems other officers persuaded him to reholster his gun.
