On August 25, Jordan White started live recording a strange scene in Washington, DC: ambulances and police cars encircling a man sleeping in his car. Suddenly, police opened fire. Dozens of shots rang out – 10 of them hitting the man, who was killed.
Police had been called because the man in the car, An’Twan Gilmore, was blocking traffic. Officers, who noticed he had a gun in his waistband, tried to wake him up. But when the car moved, they immediately shot and killed him, without them even seeing him touch his gun.
And that’s against their own policy.
Officers are banned from firing at moving vehicles. So why did they do it anyway, and to a man who had literally just woken up? “I want to know, ‘How did we get to the point he was a threat?’” said Gilmore’s cousin. We can guess why.
This system not only has a punitive response to every emergency call, but also encourages violence over the use of common sense!
If you were sleeping in your car with your foot on the brake, and were suddenly awakened by police beating on your window with their guns out, how would you instinctively react?
These police didn’t empathize that way before they shot Gilmore, because they can’t empathize with people they don’t see as human beings.