Editor’s note:
In the video above, I explained some rea­sons peo­ple run from the police in sim­ple terms. I drew from my ten years of polic­ing and over a decade of watch­ing, research­ing, and writ­ing about American polic­ing and the black American experience.
My assess­ments in the video are val­i­dat­ed expo­nen­tial­ly as we wit­ness once again police offi­cers using lethal force in cir­cum­stances where no force was warranted.
At this point, one must ask, would this cop have opt­ed to fire his weapon at a flee­ing white male? As I have said repeat­ed­ly in arti­cle after arti­cle, they deval­ue black lives; there­fore, it is easy for them to dis­pense with it.
This kind of behav­ior will con­tin­ue because even in cir­cum­stances where the mur­der­ers are found to have vio­lat­ed trust, oath, and the sanc­ti­ty of life, the tax­pay­ers are forced to dole out pay­ments to the vic­tim’s fam­i­lies, who are all too hap­py to take the lit­tle mon­ey and go on spend­ing sprees. There is no real con­se­quence for the per­pe­tra­tors of this con­tin­ued insane violence.
In case after case, we see black women, in par­tic­u­lar, call­ing the police to homes, know­ing full well that police hate black men and that this could mean the death of their men, yet they do it anyway.
This is exact­ly the way the sys­tem was designed to work.
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​h​o​w​-​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​h​a​v​e​-​b​e​c​o​m​e​-​l​e​t​h​a​l​-​k​i​l​l​i​n​g​-​m​a​c​h​i​n​es/

Louisiana Cop Arrested for Killing Unarmed Black Man as He

Fled

By Brooke Leigh Howard

A Shreveport police offi­cer who shot and killed an unarmed Black man as he fled his home ear­li­er this month was arrest­ed on Thursday morn­ing, accord­ing to Louisiana State Police. The cop, Alexander Tyler, has been charged with neg­li­gent homi­cide near­ly two weeks after Alonzo Bagley, 43, died at his apart­ment com­plex on Feb. 3 fol­low­ing a call to police by his wife. “Detectives with the Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations have reviewed body-worn cam­era footage and oth­er rel­e­vant evi­dence,” state police said in their announce­ment Thursday after­noon. “Based on their find­ings and in coör­di­na­tion with the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office, Troopers arrest­ed Shreveport Police Officer Alexander Tyler this morning.”
Along with announc­ing the arrest, police also released some body­cam footage and a record­ing of the 911 call placed the evening Bagley was killed.
Bagley’s fam­i­ly said the footage proved he should not have lost his life that day.
“Alonzo was just so, so scared,” the family’s attor­ney, Ron Haley, said in a state­ment. “Everyone at the scene, includ­ing the per­pe­tra­tor Alexander Tyler, knew Mr. Bagley should not have been shot that night. He wasn’t a threat. He deserved to live.”
https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​n​-​p​o​l​i​c​i​n​g​-​i​s​-​r​a​c​e​-​s​o​l​d​i​e​r​i​ng/

According to the arrest war­rant, police were called to Bagley’s home by his wife, who said he was drunk and threat­en­ing her and her daugh­ters. After cops arrived, Bagley went into his bed­room, attempt­ed to “grab some­thing off a night­stand,” and then fled the apart­ment by jump­ing over the bal­cony handrail, police said. As Bagley ran through the apart­ment com­plex, Tyler shot him in the chest in an entry­way. “Oh, Lord. Oh, God. You shot me,” Bagley, who had his emp­ty hands in the air, told the offi­cer, accord­ing to the fil­ing. Tyler and anoth­er offi­cer called to the scene attempt­ed to admin­is­ter aid, but he was lat­er pro­nounced dead. According to the affi­davit, Tyler, 23, told police that Bagley had approached him and that he “could not see his hands.” But the war­rant states that “there were no known reports made to the respond­ing offi­cers that [Bagley] was in pos­ses­sion of a dan­ger­ous weapon…[and] no artic­u­la­ble facts were pro­vid­ed… that would jus­ti­fy the need for dead­ly force.” In one of the body­cam videos released, two offi­cers can be seen knock­ing on the door of Bagley’s apart­ment. He answers with a liquor bot­tle in hand and declines to step out­side, then claims he needs to put his dog away and walks back into the apartment.

Officers fol­low him into a back bed­room and see Bagley jump­ing over the bal­cony out­side the room. The offi­cer wear­ing the body cam­era leaves the apart­ment to fol­low Bagley as he runs through the apart­ment com­plex. At one point, a loud gun­shot rings out and Bagley can be seen col­laps­ing against the side of a build­ing. Another offi­cer, who is already out­side, then walks with a gun toward Bagley. A sec­ond video shows Tyler chas­ing Bagley with his gun in his hand, before he cuts around a cor­ner of a build­ing and shoots. “No, no, no, man! C’mon, dude!” Tyler anx­ious­ly pants, seem­ing­ly sur­prised at the sever­i­ty of Bagley’s injuries.
 At a press con­fer­ence with Bagley’s fam­i­ly on Thursday after­noon, Haley said, “Flight is not a death sen­tence. Flight does not mean shoot to kill. Flight does not mean judge, jury and exe­cu­tion­er. And that’s what hap­pened here.” He ques­tioned over­all polic­ing in the coun­try, claim­ing no amount of train­ing can remove cops’ bias towards Black and brown men. He slammed Shreveport police and accused Tyler of hav­ing pre­vi­ous dis­ci­pli­nary issues. Alternatively, he com­mend­ed Louisiana State Police for tak­ing swift action. Bagley’s broth­er, Xavier Sudds, said he didn’t under­stand why Tyler imme­di­ate­ly pulled his gun out. “As a police offi­cer, you have a call­ing to pro­tect and serve,” he said. “I don’t feel like Shreveport police pro­tect­ed or served Alonzo Bagley, my broth­er, a son, a hus­band. They failed miserably.”

Bagley’s fam­i­ly crit­i­cized the local city gov­ern­ment, claim­ing the may­or hadn’t pro­vid­ed any com­fort in the near­ly two weeks since Bagley’s death. Some also felt Tyler wasn’t prop­er­ly charged. “It hon­est­ly got me see­ing him take his last breath. It real­ly broke my heart; my heart’s still bro­ken,” Sudds said. “I’m gonna keep say­ing that this is painful. I’m hurt­ing. My fam­i­ly is hurt­ing. We’re hurt­ing as a peo­ple, and a call to jus­tice is what is need­ed.” In an inter­view with local news out­let KSLA fol­low­ing the press­er, Tyler’s attor­ney, Dhu Thompson, said no offi­cer ever wants to be in a sit­u­a­tion like his client. “All good offi­cers don’t go out on the street, you know, want­i­ng to shoot some­body in this sit­u­a­tion,” he said. “He was put in an unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion. He’s not cav­a­lier about this. He’s just as shook about this inci­dent as any oth­er rea­son­able offi­cer would be.” Gregory O’Neal, a child­hood friend of Bagley’s, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that he’s still strug­gling to process what hap­pened after view­ing the “dev­as­tat­ing” body­cam footage. O’Neal and Bagley met as kids, and their friend­ship con­tin­ued into their adult­hood. They shared the same birth­day, had mutu­al friends, and grew up in the same neigh­bor­hood, where O’Neal even­tu­al­ly became pres­i­dent of the res­i­den­tial asso­ci­a­tion, he said.

“Being involved in a neigh­bor­hood and just see­ing what’s going on in the com­mu­ni­ty and then see­ing things that are going on in the world, it’s def­i­nite­ly dev­as­tat­ing when a per­son you grew up with ends up in a sit­u­a­tion like this,” O’Neil explained. According to CNN, Bagley sued Shreveport police offi­cers, accus­ing them of assault­ing him dur­ing a 2018 arrest. It’s unclear how that law­suit was resolved. O’Neal spec­u­lat­ed that Bagley may have run away from the offi­cers because of his pre­vi­ous encounter with police. “I think the offi­cer respond­ed out of — I’m not gonna say fear, but he had dif­fer­ent options he could’ve chose[n],” O’Neal told The Daily Beast. “Just fir­ing a shot, there are a lot of oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties that he could have tak­en at that point.”(Adapted)