DEESCLATION.
That is what the cops are supposed to do before anything else try to deescalate the situation at hand.
The man did have a weapon, but it appears his mother called the cops to let them know he was having a mental health breakdown and wasn’t acting in his right mind. When those type of calls come in, you can’t be trigger happy. He was walking towards the cops, but there were a safe distance away when they shot him at least 15 times.
His mother who was trying to get her son to calm down immediately came to his aid.
Sadly, he died at the hospital.
There were dozens of witnesses as well as video of the interaction between the cops and man. It seems to me that the cops panicked and shot him.
Here is the statement they have made.
As you know the cops are known to twist facts around so take it with a grain of salt.
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office takes its obligation to try to be fair and to seek evenhanded justice seriously. The DAO Special Investigations Unit responded to today’s fatal shooting of a civilian by police shortly after it occurred, and has been on scene with other DAO personnel since that time investigating, as we do jointly with the PPD Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation Unit, in shootings and fatalities by other means involving police. We intend to go where the facts and law lead us and to do so carefully, without rushing to judgment and without bias of any kind.
People who witnessed this incident or have information they believe to be relevant to this investigation are encouraged to contact the District Attorney’s Office Special Investigations Unit hotline: 215-686-9608.
In the hours and days following this shooting, we ask Philadelphians to come together to uphold people’s freedom to express themselves peacefully and to reject violence of any kind.”
You can watch the video yourself (it is graphic) and make your own determination.
I doubt this happens if the person was white and in a white community.
Flip the page for the video and more info on what happened before the fatal shooting.