At least six people were shot and killed by police officers across the United States the day after, on April 20, jurors found Chauvin guilty of the murder of George Floyd.
Even when Derek Chauvin’s case was fresh in the memory: the reading of the verdict in a Minneapolis court, the shackle of the former police officer, the jubilation over what many saw as justice, even then, blood flowed through the streets. of the United States at the hands of law enforcement agencies.
En those 24 hours, uA 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, un man in Escondido, California and another 42-year-old in North Carolina died from excessive use of police force.
The deaths, in some cases, provoked new cries for justice. Some said they reflect an urgent need for radical changes in the American police force, a need that Chauvin’s verdict cannot hide. For others, the shootings are a tragic reminder of the difficult and dangerous decisions law enforcement agencies face on a daily basis.
In addition to them, two men in San Antonio, one of whom has not been identified and another is 31 years old. in central Massachusetts were killed in widely differing circumstances.
Some occurred while officers were investigating serious crimes. Police say some of the people were armed with a gun, a knife or a metal pole. A man claimed to have a bomb that he threatened to detonate. In several cases, little is known about the lives of the murdered and what happened in their final moments.
The deadly encounters are just a small snapshot of the thousands of interactions between American police officers and civilians every day. most of which end safely. However, uneventful encounters between the police and the population are not a problem.
It’s a very different story when a gun is drawn and a life ends.
As the nation watched the judge read the verdict against Chavuin, on Tuesday afternoon, an officer hundreds of miles away listened to his patrol radio in a Columbus, Ohio neighborhood. Minutes before, a colleague shot and killed a teenage girl .
Police had been called to the home after someone called 911 and reported being physically threatened. Body camera footage shows an officer approaching a group of people in the driveway as the teenager, Ma’Khia Bryant, wielded a knife savagely. Moments later, the girl charges a young woman immobilized against a car.
The officer fires four shots before Bryant falls to the ground. A black-handled blade, similar to a kitchen or steak knife, lies on the sidewalk next to it.
“You didn’t have to shoot him! It’s just a girl! “a man yelled at the officer.
The officer responds: “I had a knife. She just went to her. “
Later, a distraught neighbor yells at the officers: “See why blacks lives matter? Do you understand now?“
Bryant, who was in foster care at the time, I was a shy and quiet girl who liked to make hair and dance videos on TikTokher grandmother, Debra Wilcox, said to The Associated Press. His family says his actions that day were not his own.
“I don’t know what happened there unless he feared for his life,” Wilcox said.
Although officials have said Bryant’s death was a tragedy, point to laws that allow police to use deadly force to protect themselves and the others.
The officer’s actions were “an act of heroism” with tragic results., said the president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, “one more demonstration of the impossible situations” facing the police.
Around the same time that the radio carried the news of Chauvin’s verdict to Columbus, Two officers in San Antonio were confronting a man on a bus. It is not clear exactly how the encounter began, but police say the unidentified man was armed. Ended up with officers firing fatal shots.
Later that night in the same city, authorities say a man killed a person who worked in a shed outside his home. When officers arrived, the suspect began shooting at the police. They shot back, killing him. Authorities have not released his name.
AESC
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