North Miami Shooting: Charles Kinsey A Victim of Black Bias?

The recent North Miami shooting incident in which an unarmed African American was shot sparked outrage across the country.

Authorities in North Miami on Friday identified the cop who shot an unarmed African-American man this week, stated a report by CNN.

The police officer who shot behavior therapist Charles Kinsey has been identified as Jonathan Aledda. The cop has now been placed on administrative leave, said North Miami City Manager Larry Spring Jr, at a press conference.

City authorities did not provide more details about why the cop gunned down Charles Kinsey, as he was only trying to protect an autistic patient in his care.

Aledda is a four-year department veteran and a member of the SWAT team. Emile Holland, another police officer, has also been placed on administrative leave without pay for allegedly giving false statements to investigators, Spring said at the conference.

The North Miami shooting incident has sparked street protests, and Spring said a First Amendment zone will be established outside the police department for demonstrators.

According to researchers, Black Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to be killed by police officers, says a report by Five Thirty Eight.

Charles Epp, a political scientist at the University of Kansas, believes most scholars in the field would say the convergence of black people and police officers in places of concentrated disadvantage plays a major role, although he added that the decisions of departments and officers also are significant and interconnected.

“A more aggressive style of policing” in those areas “almost certainly contributes to more rapid escalations toward use of deadly force,” said Epp, co-author of the book Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship.

Mayor promises action

Mayor Smith Joseph apologized to the wounded man and promised a complete investigation of the shooting.

“I have made it clear that I will not tolerate anything that goes against the process,” the mayor asserted.

John Rivera, president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, said a video of the shooting doesn’t tell the whole story. The officer had been aiming for the patient beside Kinsey, whom he thought posed a danger.

“The (union) is now trying to say they intended to shoot my client, and instead they shot my employee,” Clint Bower told CNN’s “New Day” on Friday. “To me, that’s just outrageous,” he said.

“Mr. Kinsey did everything right, let’s be real clear about that,” Rivera said.

Aledda issued a statement in the form of a text message, which Rivera read to reporters.

“I took this job to save lives and help people,” according to the officer’s text statement. “I did what I had to do in a split second to accomplish that, and hate to hear others paint me as something I’m not.”

Rivera said that the police officer involved “wishes nothing but the best for Mr. Kinsey and the officer is praying for his speedy recovery, as are we.”

Meanwhile, Kinsey’s attorney Hilton Napoleon II released a video that was recorded by a bystander,

According to CNN, the cell phone video was captured moments before the incident and shows what happened before the shooting. The video shows a man sitting cross-legged on the ground. He was holding on to an object in his hand. Kinsey was lying on the street, holding his hands in the air. He was seen yelling to police that the man beside him is holding a toy truck and not a weapon.

A transcript of Charles Kinsey’s near-death experience

Sharing this incident with WSVN, Kinsey said he was stunned by the shooting, like when a mosquito bites unexpectedly.

“When he hit me, I’m like, I still got my hands in the air,” he said.

“I’m like, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ ” Kinsey said he asked the officer.

“He said to me, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

North Miami police have said officers had “attempted to negotiate with the two men on the scene.”

Kinsey said he tried to persuade police not to harm his patient. He asked his patient to be still and lie down.

“Please be still… get down… lay on your stomach,” Kinsey says in the video.

The man beside him rocks back and forth.

“I was more worried about him than myself,” Kinsey told WSVN.

“As long as I’ve got my hands up, they’re not gonna shoot me, that’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “Wow, was I wrong.”

[Photo by Wilfredo Lee/AP Images]