I am a little surprised that he was charged, but at the same time, I am not. Ultimately, I doubt he gets convicted. This was the car from the shooting, the other kid that ran was charged with attempted murder. The kid that was shot had an empty gun magazine in his pocket and there were two guns in the car. But the cop did not know all of this until after he shot this kid. Could the argument be made that this kid was a threat to the community? Yes, i think that argument could be made. He certainly was not a threat to the officer. And these cases are tried under what the cop knew or suspected at the time of the incident. I think this was a messy shoot, and the argument I spoke of is in the weak side, as proving this kid was an immediate threat to the community would be difficult.
As always, my biggest issue with these incidents is that we have a person involved in a shooting, and he runs away. He is shot by police. The reaction by the protesters and the nationwide attention given to this story, and the outpouring of grief is not the same as if this kid was shot by someone other than a cop. There are thousands of kids and adults that have been shot this year and no one knows their name. There were no protests, no one blocking traffic, and little in the way of grief(except by the family) or anger. The people crying and shouting in the streets did not happen, but because this little thug was shot by an officer, we get to see pictures of him smiling and hearing what he wanted to be when he grew up. The thousands of people just like him that are shot or murdered apparently do not matter-their black lives did not matter because they were shot by other black people. So there is an obvious disconnect regarding the message of the protesters and their anger and grief. When 22 of the 34 murders in Pittsburgh for 2018 were black, and there were no protests for them, I don’t take the people that are suddenly concerned with black lives when the shooter is an officer.
