In an effort to decrease violent confrontations between police and people with mental health issues, several Orange County cities are aiming to use teams of medical and social workers to respond to mental health-related calls for service.
George Floyd anniversary: The death toll that shows little has changed since his murder shocked the world msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Sheriff’s deputies on the homeless outreach unit in Orange County, California, shot and killed Kurt Reinhold, an unarmed homeless man, in September after surveilling him, seeming to mock a Black accent, and accusing him of jaywalking. (Courtesy of John Taylor)
Police have killed at least 229 Black people among a total of 426 people of colour since former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on 25 May, 2020. Each case is different, but many share core similarities: quick encounters, for low-level infractions, met with deadly force, leaving families and communities with unanswered questions.
For nearly five months, the family of Kurt Reinhold, a homeless Black man shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies in Southern California last September, had no idea why he was killed.
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President Joe Biden has continued to push the narrative of “systemic racism” against black Americans when it comes to police shootings in the aftermath of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. But Chauvin s conduct is an outlier, not the norm. It isn t just the data that demonstrates this. The very examples that activists themselves choose to highlight undercut their own assertion that racism is an inescapable, ubiquitous part of American life.
The latest example of how shaky the systemic racism narrative really is comes from media outlets such as NPR and the
New York Times. Short on good, clear examples of unjustifiable brutality, they are now trying to tie the apparently justified police shooting of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant to George Floyd’s death after Chauvin’s trial.
On 14 August last year, LAPD officers were responding to reports of an alleged burglary attempt when they came upon Daniel Rivera, 37, standing near a ravine. Body-camera footage showed he hopped a fence into the wash, and was lying face down on the ground, largely motionless, as police approached.
Even though he was unarmed and not moving, one officer kneeled on his back, two others handcuffed him, one shoved his face into the ground, and another shocked him with a Taser four times, causing his body to convulse, according to a lawsuit and footage. He appeared to call for help and scream in pain, but officers kept him largely face down for about seven minutes.