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| PHOTO COURTESY OF THINKPROGRESS |
Shortly after officers shot and killed another St. Louis-area man on Tuesday, the police department announced that Kajieme Powell—the 25-year-old involved in the incident—was menacing police officers with a knife. St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson said the man was charging toward officers while holding the knife in “an overhand grip.” [In the video you shall see unequivocally that this police chief is completely wrong in his "assessment" of what transpired]
On Wednesday evening, the police department released a video of the incident. Apparently filmed on a cell phone, the video shows Powell walking erratically and demanding officers shoot him. A few seconds later, as Powell walks toward the officers, they oblige his request, firing a barrage of bullets into his crumpling body. Officers continue shooting, even as Powell, whose arms were by his side when the shots began, begins falling to the ground. The sound of at least nine shots can be heard on the video. Police then handcuff Powell - who was clearly dead.
Speaking to CNN on Wednesday night, Dotson defended the actions of his officers:
“The officers did what I think you or I would do, they protected their life in that situation,” Dotson said." Certainly a Taser is an option that’s available to the officers, but Tasers aren’t 100 percent. So you’ve got an individual with a knife who’s moving towards you, not listening to any verbal commands, continues, says, ‘shoot me now, kill me now.’ Tasers aren’t 100 percent. If that Taser misses, that individual continues on and hurts an officer.”
Kajieme Powell shooting captured cell phone camera shows St Louis PD have some explaining to do. [CAUTION VIDEO IS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC
Yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder to visited Ferguson, where he spoke movingly of “the mistrust” between the public and the police.
Holder described two incidents in which he felt profiled:
I am the attorney general of the United States. But I am also a black man. I can remember being stopped on the New Jersey turnpike on two occasions and accused of speeding. Pulled over. . . ‘Let me search your car’. . . Go through the trunk of my car, look under the seats and all this kind of stuff. I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me.
I think about my time in Georgetown—a nice neighborhood of Washington—and I am running to a picture movie at about 8 o’clock at night. I am running with my cousin. Police car comes driving up, flashes his lights, yells ‘where you going? Hold it!’ I say ‘Woah, I’m going to a movie.’ Now my cousin started mouthing off. I’m like, ‘This is not where we want to go. Keep quiet.’ I’m angry and upset. We negotiate the whole thing and we walk to our movie. At the time that he stopped me, I was a federal prosecutor. I wasn't a kid. I was a federal prosecutor. I worked at the United States Department of Justice. So I've confronted this myself.
“The dispute over the facts in the Michael Brown case offers the hope that there is a right answer—that Wilson either did clearly the right thing or clearly the wrong thing,” Ezra Klein wrote. “The video of the Powell case delivers a harder reality: what the police believe to be the right thing and what the people they serve believe to be the right thing may be extremely different.”
Moving forward, the incident report on Powell’s killing lists the officers — who were completely unharmed — as the “victims” in the incident. Eric Holder told Americans that he understands why communities may sometimes distrust the police that are tasked with protecting them - a point that two St. Louis officers have just severely underscored with them at a minimum, pulling the trigger eleven [11] times!
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Ferguson Cop Who Killed Mike Brown Shot More Bullets Than The Entire British Police Force Did
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Roger West
