POLICE BRUTALITY WATCH: VIRGINIA POLICE SHOOT AND KILL UNARMED BLACK WOMAN (3876 hits)
On Saturday, a 25-year-old Virginia woman named India M. Beaty was shot and killed by local police officers in a parking lot, where cops were staking out an unrelated investigation. At 1:20 a.m., police witnessed an altercation between India and an unarmed man, during which she held what appeared to be a handgun.
According to a news release, the cops “provided verbal commands” to drop the weapon. The release says India “made a threatening motion with the handgun” and “investigators discharged their service weapons.”
While officers thought India was brandishing a handgun, she actually wasn’t — it was a replica similar to the one 12-year-old Tamir Rice was holding when he was killed last year.
The Virginian-Pilot says India was the third person to be killed by Norfolk, Virginia police this year, and the second in just over a week. That particular police department has not yet been outfitted with body cameras, which would offer insight into this tragic case.
In 2015, The Washington Post conducted a yearlong study of fatal shootings by police officers, a project prompted by the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Although the majority of victims brandishing a weapon were white, the study found that 3 out of 5 victims “exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic,” which means that police officers are more likely to use their service weapons against unarmed individuals of color than whites.
At the same time, white shooters exhibiting very threatening behavior — like the two drunk men who “shot up” an Idaho Walmart with BB guns — are arrested without incidence. Clearly something needs to change on a systemic level to prevent tragic shootings of unarmed individuals like India, and equipping departments with body cameras is a start that will likely make individual officers more cautious in their actions.
WOW!!! How tragic, no motive was given on the altercation between India and an unarmed man, could the man be hers? Could this be a lovers spat,This report does not cover that or don't give account of the man who was in the altercation. WOW!!!
Sad post... I can see this one going in favor of the police. Lets keep our eye's open on this story as it develops.
Sad all around. This happens all to often, they really need to ban realistic looking toy guns. Police aren't going to take a chance that a toy gun is not a real gun. Yet at the same time, why was the sister holding a fake gun in her hands in the first place?
Monday, March 28th 2016 at 5:27PM
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