Christian Taylor, a 19-year-old student and football player at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, who was shot dead by a white trainee police officer on Friday, is the 24th unarmed victim of fatal Police shooting according to The Washington Post.
19-yr-old student is 24th ‘unarmed black man’ shot dead by US police in 2015 – Washington Post
Christian Taylor, a 19-year-old student and football player at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, who was shot dead by a white trainee police officer on Friday, is the 24th unarmed victim of fatal Police shooting according to The Washington Post.
According to reports, Taylor had allegedly crashed his car into an auto dealership and vandalized cars before he was shot four times – in the neck, chest and abdomen, by a 49-year-old white police officer, Brad Miller.
It turned out that Miller was still a trainee officer and Taylor was unarmed.
Taylor’s death comes almost a year after the fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking protests in many states and bringing the United States’ police much criticism.
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The post-Brown killing protests however seem to have achieved nothing as the The Post writes that the US police officers have killed 23 unarmed black men before Taylor.
“So far this year, 24 unarmed black men have been shot and killed by police - one every nine days, according to a Washington Post database of fatal police shootings.
“During a single two-week period in April, three unarmed black men were shot and killed. All three shootings were either captured on video or, in one case, broadcast live on local TV.”
Even more alarming, The Post notes that, though “585 people shot and killed by police” in the same period, the percentage of killings of unarmed blacks in relation to other races is almost half.
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“However, black men accounted for 40 percent of the 60 unarmed deaths, even though they make up just 6 percent of the U.S. population.
“The Post's analysis shows that black men were seven times more likely than white men to die by police gunfire while unarmed.”
Most of the fatal shootings are justified with the claims of the victims being armed and a threat to the officer in question, but The Post again notes that this is not the case in the 24 deaths.
“In many of the 24 shootings of unarmed black men, however, the threat was not readily apparent, raising questions about the officers’ use of deadly force.”
Going by this, it is easy for the average person to suggest a race inequality and police aggression towards people of color.
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The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag is one of the social media response to the social temperature following the deaths.
In the social media fury following the jail death of Sandra Bland, a black woman arrested after a traffic stop, some people noted that it is a privilege to wake up without heating the news of a black person in suspect circumstances.
The US government will have to respond decisively or risk escalation of race violence.
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