We try to doc­u­ment some of the atroc­i­ties, but despite our best efforts, we can only doc­u­ment a minute por­tion of what is hap­pen­ing in the United States under the guise of policing.
It is crit­i­cal that mem­bers of the black com­mu­ni­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, main­tain records and not trust main­stream media enti­ties to do so based on their inabil­i­ty to report police crimes before the advent of social media and cell­phone cameras.(mb)

Earlier this month, footage of a dis­turb­ing police-involved shoot­ing was pub­licly released. A home sur­veil­lance video showed a hus­band and his wife sleep­ing in their mobile home when they were awak­ened by cops on speak­ers demand­ing they come out­side. Tired and dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed, the North Carolina cou­ple oblig­ed. As the man opened the door with his hands up, with­in sec­onds, he was shot sev­er­al times and fell back­ward onto his floor.

The vic­tim was lat­er iden­ti­fied as 41-year-old Jason Harley Kloepfer. Authorities con­firmed the inci­dent hap­pened on Dec. 12 in Murphy, North Carolina. Law enforce­ment offi­cials were dis­patched to the scene for what was believed to be an armed, hostage sit­u­a­tion. On Dec. 13, Cherokee County Sheriff Dustin Smith addressed the shoot­ing in a Facebook post. Apparently, after “rec­og­niz­ing there was an armed sus­pect present and the poten­tial for a hostage sit­u­a­tion,” the Cherokee Indian Police Department SWAT Team showed up at the res­i­dence. From there, Kloepfer is accused of engag­ing “in a ver­bal alter­ca­tion with offi­cers” and “con­front­ed” them before being shot.

After the footage was made pub­lic, Smith refut­ed his ini­tial claims. “Neither myself nor Chief Deputy Justin Jacobs were on the scene at the time of the shoot­ing, so we relied on infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to us from the Cherokee Indian Police Department,” he said on Facebook last week. He added, “The first time I ever saw video footage from the shoot­ing was on Jan. 18, 2023.” Without a sin­gle apol­o­gy to the dis­abled res­i­dent, the sher­iff seem­ing­ly blamed the inci­dent on his depart­ment not hav­ing its “own tac­ti­cal team” to han­dle hostage sit­u­a­tions. “I will be ask­ing coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers for the funds to cre­ate such a unit when bud­get nego­ti­a­tions for the next fis­cal year begin,” he continued.

In the video footage, mem­bers of the North Carolina SWAT team are heard say­ing, “F**k, bro, f**k!” Another one alerts his peers that their unjust actions were filmed, adding, “Hey, cam­eras, cam­eras!” Kloepfer suf­fered from mul­ti­ple gun­shot wounds and was charged with com­mu­ni­cat­ing threats and resist, obstruct and delay. “I can’t talk [too] much about details right now as this is [a] major, major case [that’s] still evolv­ing,” Kloepfer shared on Facebook on Jan. 20. (From Yahoo).

See Kloepfer’s state­ment below.