Another black man has been shot by the police in an act of mayhem, releasing a barrage of twenty bullets at the assailant. Saheed Vassell was literally torn apart by the number of projectiles fired by the police gang. After the shooting, officers discovered that the object was “a pipe with some sort of knob on it,” said Chief of Department Terence A. Monahan. Police shot over 19 rounds into the man. Vassell’s death comes amid questions about law enforcement’s unequal treatment of people of color following another police shooting recently in Sacramento, California. Police there said they thought Stephon Clark had a gun, but only a cell phone was found near his body. He was shot 6 times in the back. According to police transcripts of the 911 call, three different 911 callers described a man with a gun, pointing it at people on the streets. When officers arrived at the scene, they found a man matching the description provided by the callers. The suspect then took a two-handed shooting stance and pointed an object at the approaching officers, two of whom were in uniform. Four officers discharged their weapons, striking the man, Monahan said. Then they gave him first aid and called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. However according to some of the callers the weapon was not positively identified as a gun. According to some of the callers:
“There is a guy in a brown jacket walking around pointing — I don’t know, (to someone else) what is he pointing in people’s face? They say it’s a gun, it’s silver.”
“There’s a guy walking around the street, he looks like he’s crazy, but he’s pointing something at people that looks like a gun and he’s like popping it, as if, like if he’s pulling the trigger.”
Brooklyn resident Eric Vassell said that the victim was his 35-year-old son, he had no access to guns and suffered from bipolar disorder. He’s polite, nice, he’s kind. He just comes and he goes. The excessive force used against people of color is again at the forefront of our national consciousness. Last week a black man in Sacramento was shot at eight times and hit six times in the back for allegedly breaking out car windows and who can forget Micah Xavier Johnson, who was blown to bits, in a standoff in Dallas Texas by a robot who was sent in and detonated using C4, a military grade explosive. They could have just as well used a debilitating gas to subdue Johnson, just as the officers involved in these excessive uses of force could have shot to render the suspects incapacitated instead of shooting to kill. It begs to wonder why are American police trained to kill instead of incapacitate. You have to wonder why four police armed with 9mm and clips could not shoot at the suspects arms and legs, or why not fire warning shots when you are under cover of darkness instead of killing a man who is running away from you as police did to Stephon Clark. He had a cell phone. New York’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman. opened an investigation into Vassell’s death. “We’re committed to conducting an independent, comprehensive and fair investigation.”
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