In Douglas County, Colorado recently, a sheriff’s deputy aimed his AR-15 at a 23-year-old Black man in a parking lot and pulled the trigger.
The young man had a handgun, but he wasn’t waving it or threatening anyone. The officer, without announcing he was a cop, yelled, “Drop the gun!” and before the young man had time to react or comply, fired nine shots into his back.
Not his chest. Not his arm. In his back.
The young man fell into the car and died next to his pregnant girlfriend, who was waiting for him to get in.
Deputies had been called to the scene, an arcade and entertainment center in the mostly white Highlands Ranch community, on reports of an active female shooter inside the venue.
According to all accounts, a group of young women had gotten into a fight with another group of young women in the women’s bathroom, and a woman was shot and wounded. While the cop had no information about the man he was about to shoot, the suspected shooter was the Black man’s stepsister.
As the chaos inside unfolded, the young Black man in the parking lot had taken out his firearm — which was properly registered — to protect himself and his girlfriend.
He had the gun in his hand, but he hadn’t pointed it at anyone. He hadn’t threatened anyone. He was simply doing what gun advocates around America keep saying we need to do to protect ourselves in case there’s a problem.
Yet he still ended up dead.
We’ve all watched too many news reports over the years with a similar story and headline.
Police Officer Kills Black Man.
For most of us with no connection to a particular story, we want to know.
Was the person killed a threat? Did he point a weapon? Did he have something in his hand that looked like it could be a weapon that he was about to use?
We all know police have a very difficult and dangerous job when called to the scene of a crime. Stress levels are high. And people’s lives may be on the line. It’s not an easy position to be in.
Most good people want to get to the bottom of what happened when someone gets killed.
In other words, did a cop kill someone who wasn’t posing a danger to cops or others? Or was the police officer unjustified given the circumstances?
Only people with a political angle draw their conclusions before knowing the facts.
So what happened after the police killed this young Black man?
Before any investigation, the sheriff’s office gave its story, which it learned solely from the shooting officer. And then sent off to news outlets.
The Sheriff’s story:
The young man had refused the deputy’s orders and had turned to shoot the officer. He posed an immediate and lethal threat to the officer. The officer could’ve died had he not eliminated the threat.
TV and newspapers were quick to report the sheriff’s narrative. After all, it came from law enforcement so it must be true. Right?
And let’s be honest, if the sheriff’s story was true that a person was about to shoot an officer, none of us would think the officer should just sit still.
But when officials viewed videos from the bodycam and dashcam, the sheriff’s details of what transpired kept changing, all while the footage was kept under wraps until a judge finally ordered the sheriff to make it public.
The public finally got to see the video. You can watch the highly edited clip on Youtube, although I caution you it may make you cry. It might make you angry.
What anyone can clearly see is a young Black man proceeding to get in a vehicle. Not at all facing any cops. Indeed, the cop approached the young man from behind, not the other way around.
You hear on the video a deputy, who does not announce he’s a cop, yell at the young man to drop his gun, and then maybe two seconds later, before any chance at compliance or understanding, the deputy rapid fires off nine shots with his AR-15 from a mere five feet away.
What’s obvious from the video is the young man doesn’t flinch or make any rapid movements, clearly not yet digesting what’s about to transpire. The man isn’t pointing anything at the officer. He isn’t remotely a pending threat to anyone.
Watch the video rather than rely on what the sheriff says happened.
Before the command to drop, the word “POLICE” is not heard once. Still, the deputy proceeds to unload the nine shots into the young man’s back.
In a world of truth and justice, where we should be able to trust the people who took an oath to protect and serve, Douglas County would’ve watched the video, done a fuller investigation and understood that the officer was not justified in shooting the young Black man.
Whether racist or not. Whether full of bias or not. An officer of the law just shot a 23-year-old man without justification. There’s no other story on the video no matter how many times Douglas County tries to spin it.
In a fair world, the officer at a minimum would’ve been put on unpaid administrative leave. The County would have sent condolences to the family. An independent, unbiased investigation not run by Douglas County would’ve ensued.
But no. Instead, the police and prosecutors dug in their heels. Sticking to a story that anyone with a brain can see from the video isn’t true.
Then to make matters worse and build their justification narrative, they proceeded to accuse anyone affected by the police murder as being accomplices to the actual female shooting suspect, with zero evidence other than they knew her and were there.
The police were out to protect their own rather than set truth as their goal. They needed to tell the story they everyone was dangerous. Even a pregnant girlfriend who has never even touched a gun.
Truth didn’t matter. The young man simply had the wrong skin color.
Here we go again.
The police department and County prosecutors aren’t bad apples.
They aren’t some wild aberrations.
They’re the system’s facilitators and protectors of the officer who killed another Black man without justification.
And you wonder why some people don’t trust the police version of events when Black people are gunned down by the people in uniform in this country.
Our government should strive for truth rather than find the facts to justify their bad acts. Only then can there be any trust.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeffrey Kass' work on Medium.