The story hasn't gotten a ton of news, yet, but it will. A man who got out of a car with his hands raised in the air got shot and killed. It's understood that the 36 year-old African-American man had a list of priors on his record including the shooting of an officer in his teens. Bridgeton is known as an impoverished area, and since this kind of news has been happening often, along with the fact that the gentleman who was shot and killed had priors, there is a decent chance this story DOES NOT get the news it should.
Some people throughout the country are probably saying, "He was a bad man and a suspicious man, I totally get why they shot him to death." Here's the thing, though: He served his time. He's been free for years. According to the video and numerous other reports, there WAS a gun in the vehicle. A gun which was confiscated by police shortly after the traffic stop, so the danger for the cops, at the very least, was minimized.
You'll see that the cops kept telling the two gentlemen in the car to stay in their vehicles (It should be noted that this traffic stop was for running a stop sign. The man who was shot and killed was not behind the wheel. He was just a passenger...not that that information makes the killing more or less acceptable, but the passenger, despite his known priors, was doing the least wrong from the get-go). Yes, the passenger does get out of the car, but he comes out with his hands up, surrendering. Although I'm not in his mind, he was probably trying to allow the officer to further search the vehicle, since it looks like that's what the officer on the right of the video was doing. The officer kept warning that he would shoot if he reached for anything. That didn't happen. So instead, he shot the guy for nothing.
This shit is just getting exhausting, isn't it?
*Here's the video and story for you to make your own opinons about the situation: http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/01/video_of_bridgeton_police_killing_of_jerame_c_reid.html
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