Leaders of St. Louis’s black community want a Justice Department probe of Wednesday’s police shooting of a black teen, convinced that the shooting was not justified.
Protesters gathered Thursday outside the St. Louis Police Department’s headquarters and called for a Justice Department investigation, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. They said they believed that the shooting of 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers, Jr., had been a case of “racial profiling.”
“This was a case of racial profiling turned deadly,” Missouri state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed said, adding that she believed Myers had been shot in the back of the head.
Police have said that Myers fired at least three shots at the police officer, who remains unidentified. The officer fired 17 shots in return, though it is not known how many struck Myers. Myers’ family has insisted that he was unarmed, and protests have followed that invoked the August police shooting of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Mo.
“There is no epidemic of black officers shooting white kids, but there is an epidemic of white officers shooting black kids,” Jerryl Christmas, a local lawyer who participated in the Ferguson protests, told the Post-Dispatch on Thursday.
Some news outlets have reported that the police who shot Myers was white, but others, including the Associated Press and Post-Dispatch, have not confirmed the officer’s race.
I would like to amend this headline to, “Locals call for DOJ probe of local shooting.”
One is too many.
Why was the officer pursuing them. Three blacks teens walking? Again, why was the white policeman even interacting with them?
“There is no epidemic of black officers shooting white kids, but there is an epidemic of white officers shooting black kids,”
Yes, well, what better way than that to keep them from voting?
No, they saw the cop and ran. The reason why is because Myer’s was under house arrest for unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest. As a condition of bail he was supposed to in his house wearing an ankle bracelet,
This is not going to end well for the American people.