On Wednesday afternoon in Miami, Florida, a caregiver for the disabled, Charles Kinsey, was shot in the leg following a police encounter.
Kinsey was unarmed and cooperative, and video footage from a cell phone shows him laying on his back with his hands straight up in the air while he pleads with the officer, asking him not to shoot him.
On that particular day, Kinsey was working at a nearby group home as a behavioral therapist, where he has worked for over a year with a 23-year-old autistic man. The two were outside in the street and the autistic man can be seen sitting cross-legged in front of Kinsey as he negotiates with police.
Police said that they had been dispatched to the location after a 911 call came through about a man with a gun threatening suicide.
Kinsey told WSVN-Channel 7 in Miami,
“I am laying there just like this. Telling them again there is no need for firearms. He is autistic. He has a toy truck in his hand.”
In the video footage, Kinsey can be heard clearly explaining the situation to the cops while the autistic man he is with frustratingly talks to Kinsey because he doesn’t understand what’s happening. It may well be that the autistic man’s confusing reactions and speech are what triggered the officer to fire his gun 3 times, but, as the person behind the camera asks, why would he only shoot Kinsey?
When asked about what happened after he was shot, Kinsey said,
“I’m saying, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me were, ‘I don’t know.'”
This is frightening, to say the least, proving that officers need more training to handle these precarious situations. Instead of escalating to using firearms immediately, there were many steps that the officer could have taken to diffuse the situation, but instead, his response was to shoot Kinsey.
To make matters worse, after Kinsey was shot, the officer approached him where he was laying on the ground, turned him over onto his stomach, and arrested him. Kinsey laid there bleeding for about 20 minutes, he says, waiting for the response team while the officers ignored him.
His wife, who stayed by his side while he was treated at Jackson Memorial Hospital, said,
“Right now, I am just grateful that he is alive, and he is able to tell his story.”
Though Kinsey should have never been shot in the first place, the two can find solace in the fact that he wasn’t shot dead. As recent events have shown, violence against black men by cops and vice versa have been escalating to scary new heights, which might have also contributed to the officer’s wariness.
Hilton Napoleon, Kinsey’s attorney, told the Miami Herald that Kinsey is looking to settle with the police department. He believes they know that there was misconduct involved and that settlement is their best option. As per protocol, the unnamed officer in the incident is on administrative leave, pending an investigation over the events that transpired.
Watch the video of Charles Kinsey pleading with officers before he was shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zIYzSN3jGM
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