![A video shared online appeared to show the shooting [Screengrab/Twitter via Ben Crump]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/8/22/0f2c72f9850249beb82194b1ad1808a3_18.jpg "US: Police shoot, kill Black man outside store in Louisiana")
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https://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-catholic-church-is-whore-of.htmlUS: Police shoot, kill Black man outside store in Louisiana
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/police-shoot-kill-black-man-store-louisiana-200822183109026.html
Police say 31-year-old Trayford Pellerin was armed with a knife and fled as officers tried to apprehend him.
Police in Louisiana have shot and killed a man as he tried to enter a convenience store with a knife, authorities have said.
The shooting was captured on video, and the state
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Saturday condemned what it
described as an "horrific and deadly incident of police violence against
a Black person".
The Louisiana State Police said in a statement that
officers from the Lafayette Police Department were called to a store on
Friday at 8pm about a disturbance involving a man with a knife. As
officers tried to apprehend him, he fled. Officers deployed Tasers, but
they were ineffective, the statement said.
The Louisiana State Police said they were asked by the police department in Lafayette to handle the investigation.
"Once again, video footage has captured a horrific and
deadly incident of police violence against a Black person who was
brutally killed in front of our eyes," executive director Alanah Odoms
Hebert said in a statement on Saturday.
Lawyer Ben Crump, representing Pellerin's family, called the shooting "reckless" and his death "tragic".
"The officers involved should be fired immediately for their abhorrent and fatal actions," Crump said in a statement on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Michelle Pellerin, the dead man's mother, said her son was intelligent, shy and had sought therapy for social anxiety.
The younger Pellerin became anxious in groups and may have been frightened by the officers, his mother told The Advocate. He had sought professional help earlier this year, she said.
"Instead of giving him a helping hand they gave him bullets," Crump said.
The incident was the third officer-involved shooting by Lafayette
police since mid-July. State police said a man was critically wounded
last month after being shot during an altercation with police. Another
man was in a stable condition after being shot during a burglary
investigation earlier this month.
Alton Sterling shooting: No charges for police over black man's killing
3 May 2017
The US Department of Justice has
decided not to charge two white officers who shot and killed a black man
in Louisiana last summer.
Video footage appearing to show the
officers holding down Alton Sterling as they fired their weapons sparked
days of protests in Baton Rouge.Us prosecutors said their was "insufficient evidence".
News of the decision leaked to US media on Tuesday before the city mayor or the Sterling family had been told.
"We need closure, we need a conviction. We need justice," said Sterling's aunt.
More than 100 people attended a vigil on Tuesday night outside the Triple S Food Mart where Sterling died on 5 July 2016.
The civil rights investigation was opened soon after the 37-year-old was killed outside the grocery shop where he was selling CDs.
At the time, a series of fatal police shootings involving African-Americans had sparked a debate about police use of force.
The federal decision not to prosecute the two officers comes with a new White House administration and a new head of the Justice Department, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
But it is possible that the state of Louisiana could bring its own charges.
Local officials expressed outrage that the federal authorities had not contacted the family ahead of the reported decision.
"I am appalled that this news, whether true or false, has been disseminated without a formal decision being relayed to the Sterling family first," Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome said, adding that her office had not been notified either.
What happened when Sterling died?
Police were called after reports of a man threatening people with a gun outside a shop.Mobile video footage appeared to show two officers wrestling a man in a red shirt to the floor.
One of the officers pinned the man's arm to the floor with his knee and then appeared to pull out his gun and point it at the man.
A voice is heard shouting: "He's got a gun!" Shots ring out and the camera moves away.
Police said he refused to comply with the officers' commands so they used a stun gun to bring him to the ground.
The officers say they saw a gun in one of his pockets and saw his arm move there as if he was reaching for it, just before he was shot.
Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II were placed on administrative leave after the incident.
A turbulent time
A day after the fatal confrontation, a black driver in Minnesota was shot dead in a traffic stop, and the same week five police officers in Dallas were killed.
Less than two weeks later, three police officers in Baton Rouge were killed in an ambush, further inflaming tensions in that community.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, who called the video footage "disturbing", called for a federal investigation into Sterling's death.
Two other fatal police shootings were in the news on Tuesday.
In Texas, police changed their story in what happened when an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed on Saturday night as his car drove away from police.
And a former officer in South Carolina pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of an African American he shot in the back as he ran away.
Meanwhile, two Chicago police officers were shot and wounded late on Tuesday in a drive-by attack, authorities said.
Another Year, Another Unarmed Black Man Killed by Police
The below piece was written in January of 2009.
Police continue to kill people with impunity in numbers close to 1,000 annually, disproportionally impacting black people.
Today is Oscar Grant’s funeral. He is the latest in a long string of unarmed black men to be killed by police. The night he died, Oscar, 22, was out celebrating New Year’s Eve. At around 2 a.m., he and friends were pulled off of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train- Northern California’s subway system- by police officers. He was unarmed and cooperative, even telling friends to calmly oblige the police. That did nothing to save Oscar Grant. Within minutes, without cause, a police officer would shoot him in the back, execution-style.
Watch the video yourself. You’ll see Oscar sitting up against a wall with several other young men, cooperating with police instruction. Eyewitnesses report that “the cops were hitting, yelling and cussing at the guys”, while dozens of people called out about the mistreatment. Oscar put his palms up, a clear indication of compliance. Then officers dragged him from the wall and pushed him onto his stomach, his face pressed to the floor.
Oscar feared for his life. Witnesses describe Oscar pleading for police not to taser him, begging, “Please, please, don’t tase me.” Instead, one police officer pressed his knee onto the back of Oscar’s neck. A second officer, Johannes Mehserle, leaned over him, reached for his gun, pointed it within about a foot of Oscar’s body and shot him in the back. The officers look at each other as Oscar writhes in pain and turns to look at the man who killed him. On video, you can see Oscar speaking to the officer. Witnesses tell us that he cried, “You shot me! I got a four-year-old daughter!” The video doesn’t show the officers immediately administering first aid to the man they shot. Instead, it appears to show police handcuffing Oscar, who wouldn’t live to see the sun rise on a new year.
I take the killing of Oscar Grant personally. Not because it happened in the area of my birthplace. Not because I’m a person of color who, like many people of color in the country, has experienced police abuse of power, first-hand. Not because I grew up in fear of the police after my father, the safest driver I know, was told by a police officer on a bogus stop, that the cop was considering shooting my dad. Not because of the fact, that despite the shield of my lawyer’s license, my heart still pounds at the sight of a police badge.
Oscar’s killing is personal because his death offends the fundamental principles of justice, every notion of dignity and the idea that through those threads, all of our lives are connected. As human beings, we are responsible for each other. His death means that we must work for his justice.
Police continue to kill people with impunity in numbers close to 1,000 annually, disproportionally impacting black people.
Today is Oscar Grant’s funeral. He is the latest in a long string of unarmed black men to be killed by police. The night he died, Oscar, 22, was out celebrating New Year’s Eve. At around 2 a.m., he and friends were pulled off of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train- Northern California’s subway system- by police officers. He was unarmed and cooperative, even telling friends to calmly oblige the police. That did nothing to save Oscar Grant. Within minutes, without cause, a police officer would shoot him in the back, execution-style.
Watch the video yourself. You’ll see Oscar sitting up against a wall with several other young men, cooperating with police instruction. Eyewitnesses report that “the cops were hitting, yelling and cussing at the guys”, while dozens of people called out about the mistreatment. Oscar put his palms up, a clear indication of compliance. Then officers dragged him from the wall and pushed him onto his stomach, his face pressed to the floor.
Oscar feared for his life. Witnesses describe Oscar pleading for police not to taser him, begging, “Please, please, don’t tase me.” Instead, one police officer pressed his knee onto the back of Oscar’s neck. A second officer, Johannes Mehserle, leaned over him, reached for his gun, pointed it within about a foot of Oscar’s body and shot him in the back. The officers look at each other as Oscar writhes in pain and turns to look at the man who killed him. On video, you can see Oscar speaking to the officer. Witnesses tell us that he cried, “You shot me! I got a four-year-old daughter!” The video doesn’t show the officers immediately administering first aid to the man they shot. Instead, it appears to show police handcuffing Oscar, who wouldn’t live to see the sun rise on a new year.
I take the killing of Oscar Grant personally. Not because it happened in the area of my birthplace. Not because I’m a person of color who, like many people of color in the country, has experienced police abuse of power, first-hand. Not because I grew up in fear of the police after my father, the safest driver I know, was told by a police officer on a bogus stop, that the cop was considering shooting my dad. Not because of the fact, that despite the shield of my lawyer’s license, my heart still pounds at the sight of a police badge.
Oscar’s killing is personal because his death offends the fundamental principles of justice, every notion of dignity and the idea that through those threads, all of our lives are connected. As human beings, we are responsible for each other. His death means that we must work for his justice.
