There's nothing like cutting out the middle man. I've posted a bunch of times about police officers killing "suspects," but this story takes the cake. What happened was:25-year-old Omar Edwards, a plain clothes police officer working out of a precinct in Harlem, found a guy rummaging through his car when he got off work last night. The would-be thief ran off, of course, and Edwards -- being a cop and all -- whipped out his trusty 9mm as he chased the man down the street.
Enter another police officer in an unmarked car (man-oh-man, they be SNEAKIN' around Harlem, don't they?) and you may have guessed what happened next. Yep. At the sight of a Black man (uh-huh) with a gun running down the street, the police officer still on duty jumped out of his car, squeezed off six rounds and dropped Edwards as he ran, killing him.
I hardly know where to begin. Edwards might still be alive if he hadn't pulled his gun law-enforcement-fast while chasing the guy he caught in his car. And Edwards might still be alive if the apparent police officer praxis/policy/whatever wasn't to shoot first and ask questions later. But the bottom line, I suspect, is that the shooter was White and Edwards, as I already pointed out, was Black.
Nevertheless, as always, the statement that's been released is: "It was unclear if race had any role in the shooting." When, oh, when will they quit pretending to be asleep? Even a chimpanzee can be taught to shoot a gun. One wonders if a trained chimp would use less emotional judgment and less knee-jerk reactions -- and kill fewer people -- than the cops. Especially now that they're killing each other.
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