US police brutality kills three black men in first 3 days of 2023
In the United States racially motivated killings are happening, once again, in record numbers. The tragic death of Keenan Darnell Anderson after he was tased by police officers in Los Angeles following a car accident has sparked outrage.
Anderson, 31, cousin of a co founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors, died at a hospital in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a cardiac arrest following the crash on the afternoon of January 3 In a Los Angeles neighborhood.
He was repeatedly tased by Los Angeles police officers and restrained following the accident. A 13 minute body cam footage released by Los Angeles Police Department, shows Anderson begging for help as multiple officers force him to the ground while one officer presses his elbow onto Keenan's neck using his bodyweight.
Anderson is shown pleading: “Stop it Okay, stop. Stop arming the taser”. Then Anderson can be heard saying: "They're trying to George Floyd me", referring to an African American man, George Floyd, who was killed at the hands of the US police in May 2020 in Minneapolis, sparking racial justice protests around the world.
In the body-cam footage Anderson shouts: "they're trying to kill me", asking passersby for help. After the incident, paramedics arrived at the scene and took him to a hospital where, according to the police, he had a cardiac arrest, which caused his death.
Patrisse Cullors, who co founded the Black Lives Matter movement, says her cousin was asking for help and he didn't receive it. She said he was killed adding that nobody deserves to die in fear, panicking and scared for their life.
Cullors noted her cousin had been scared for his life, stressing that he had spent the last 10 years witnessing the movement challenging the killing of black people. He knew what was at stake and he was trying to protect himself. Nobody was willing to protect him.
The killing of Anderson was the third such incident linked to the Los Angeles Police in the first days of 2023. On January 2 Police fatally shot 45 year old Takar Smith, a day later, police fired on 35 year old Oscar Sanchez. The Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, has called the incidence deeply disturbing and wants to reduce the use of force overall and has warned that she has absolutely no tolerance for excessive force.
The latest police violence highlights alarming proportions in the US in recent years, with people of color being the main targets.
A 2021 study recorded 30,800 deaths from the police violence across the US between 1980 and 2018 for higher than estimates offered by the National Vital Statistics System. This study said more than 55 deaths of such incidents in the US from 1980 to 2018 were misclassified or unreported in official Vital Statistics reports. Meanwhile, according to new data released earlier this month, US police killer these 1176 people in 2022 making it the deadliest year on record for police files in the country since experts first started tracking the killings.
The Killing of Kenan Darren Anderson brings numerous matters under the spotlight.
How US officials reacted to the incident
The 31 year old father and English teacher, an African American was killed by LAPD police. The cause of death was given as cardiac arrest due to being repeatedly tased by the police.
Anderson was a cousin of the Black Lives Matter movement's, Patrisse Cullors, but there has still been no major comment or reaction from anyone within the establishment.
Could this death have been prevented?
“This was a traffic accident. Instead of treating him like a potential criminal, police should have called and ambulance.” … “If there was a policy in which traffic stops were met with unarmed professionals who come to the scene to help with whatever situation has happened, that would have prevented my cousin’s death. And that would have prevented so many other deaths.”
Patrisse Cullors, Co-founder, BLM Movement
Another matter that has to be taken into account is how he was killed. One officer had his elbow on Anderson's neck while he was lying down before another officer tased him for roughly 30 seconds before pausing and tasing him again for five more seconds.
The other point is that the LAPD is not calling it a killing preferring to label it as an "in custody death". Apart from the ambiguity of the phrase Keane was tased death. Everyone knows LAPD and cost Kenyans death.
These types of killing and this type of force will not be interrupted unless we have courageous elected officials come forward and challenge, not just the police, but also the policies.
Patrisse Cullors, Co-founder, BLM Movement
This incident marks the third officer involved in police perpetrated deaths in the city this year. From 1980 to 2018, more than 30,000 people died as a result of police violence in the United States.
According to an article published in 2022 by The Lancet, US police are killing three people a day with no progress made since George Floyd.
Based on figures released by mapping police violence, police have killed roughly 1100 people each year since 2013. In 2021 officers killed 1136 people; one of the deadliest years on record.
National data has shown that roughly 10% of the killings by police each year start with a traffic encounter, and that one in three people killed were fleeing before lethal force was used.
Police brutality and racial bias
Why are there more cases of police brutality against African Americans or people of color than whites? By one estimate, black men are 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police.
In another study, black people who were fatally shot by police seem to be twice as likely as white people to be unarmed.
Based on information from more than 2 million 911 calls in two US cities, it can be concluded that white officers dispatched to black neighborhoods fire their guns five times as often as black officers dispatched for similar calls to the same neighborhoods.
The Washington Post reports law suits to settle allegations of misconduct by more than 7600 officers from around the country have amounted to more than $3.2 billion over the past decade.
All in all, what seems to be of an exigent nature is that US police treatment of African Americans needs an overhaul, otherwise more and more people, like Keenan Darnell Anderson, will fall victim to US police brutality and the number of officers involved in such killings will skyrocket.
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