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A Stray Bullet Hit A Woman Lying In Bed. A Federal Judge Dismissed Her Lawsuit Against Police

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Time and again, I write that the cri­sis of police vio­lence in the United States is not just an issue of vio­lent, poor­ly-trained, big­ot­ed igno­ra­mus­es in uni­form; but a com­plete struc­ture of racism that we see man­i­fest­ed large­ly in police action.
The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is far­ci­cal. It will not deal appro­pri­ate­ly and in a just way with its own foot­sol­diers, the police.
The Black com­mu­ni­ty should not expect to get jus­tice from this flawed sys­tem that was not cre­at­ed t be just and fair but designed to be exact­ly what it is.(mb)

Thomas Lee

A fed­er­al judge has dis­missed a law­suit filed by a Mississippi woman who says she was hit by a stray police bul­let while lying in bed. Latasha Smith, 49, was in bed on Dec. 11 when an offi­cer from the state-run Capitol Police fired sev­er­al bul­lets at a sus­pect run­ning through her Jackson apart­ment com­plex, accord­ing to her fed­er­al com­plaint. A stray bul­let entered Smith’s apart­ment and struck her arm. Smith, who said her teenage daugh­ter was home dur­ing the episode, was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. In April, Smith sued Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell and Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey, argu­ing that police offi­cers under their watch vio­lat­ed her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by act­ing with “delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence” for her life. She also claimed that Tindell and Luckey failed to prop­er­ly train officers.
In a Wednesday rul­ing, U.S. District Judge Tom Lee grant­ed Tindell and Luckey’s request to dis­miss the law­suit, writ­ing that they can­not be liable because they are not alleged to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the shoot­ing inci­dent and because state offi­cials can­not be sued for vio­la­tions of state law in fed­er­al court.

NBC News obtained sur­veil­lance video from Smith’s apart­ment com­plex that appeared to show an offi­cer fir­ing on a man who was flee­ing after jump­ing out of a sus­pect­ed stolen car. Tindell told the news out­let that the offi­cer was ini­tial­ly placed on leave but lat­er returned to active duty after an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined the offi­cer did not break any laws.
A spokesper­son for Tindell did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment. In a phone inter­view, Smith’s attor­ney, Dennis Sweet IV, said that he and Smith are con­sid­er­ing an appeal.
“We’re dis­ap­point­ed,” Sweet said. “The truth is they went into the com­mu­ni­ty, there was a high-speed chase, a lady in bed got shot, and there is no recourse. And that’s going to be the new police force in Jackson.”

Officers from the Capitol Police have been patrolling around state gov­ern­ment build­ings in and near down­town, while the Jackson Police Department patrols the entire city. A new Mississippi law would expand the patrol ter­ri­to­ry of the Capitol Police Department with­in Jackson. Critics say Capitol Police are aggres­sive and expand­ing the ter­ri­to­ry could endan­ger lives in the major­i­ty Black city. Smith is Black. Her com­plaint said the Capitol Police use “dis­pro­por­tion­ate and unnec­es­sary force against African American cit­i­zens.” Members of the major­i­ty-white and Republican-con­trolled Legislature said they passed the law to improve safe­ty in Jackson, which has had more than 100 homi­cides for each of the past three years. U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate has tem­porar­i­ly blocked the law from tak­ing effect.
On Wednesday, the same day Lee dis­missed Smith’s law­suit, the U.S. Department of Justice said it was seek­ing to join a fed­er­al law­suit the NAACP filed against the state to block the new law.

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