PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Ten people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct at a raucous Philadelphia community meeting where protesters shoved police officers and threw chairs in anger over the district attorney’s decision against charges in a fatal police-involved shooting.
District Attorney Seth Williams said Thursday the death of 26-year-old motorist Brandon Tate-Brown during an overnight traffic stop in December was a “terrible tragedy, but not a crime.”
He said surveillance video and other evidence corroborated the officers’ story that Tate-Brown was reaching back into his car for a loaded pistol when an officer opened fire.
Protesters unhappy with the decision disrupted a meeting Williams and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey attended Thursday night at a recreation center in the city’s Lawncrest section.
They chanted “Who killed Brandon Tate-Brown?” and “No justice, no peace, no racist police” and demanded Williams and Ramsey release the names of the officers involved in the shooting.
Ramsey declined, citing their safety. He called the crowd’s display embarrassing.
“What you saw tonight is the reason I’m not going to put those officers in jeopardy,” Ramsey said. “You saw what happened. So why would I do that?”
No one was seriously injured.
The fatal shooting of a motorist by police was a tragedy but not a crime, Philadelphia’s district attorney said Thursday.
Police say an officer shot Tate-Brown once in the head after pulling him over at about 2:45 a.m. on Dec. 15 for driving without headlights on. Police say Tate-Brown had several prior arrests.
“He broke away from officers three separate times,” Williams said. “He went around the car towards the passenger side where he tried to reach inside to the place where he knew he had put his gun.”
Williams said he spoke with Tate-Brown’s family before announcing his findings. He said his heart goes out to them.
Tanya Dickerson, Tate-Brown’s mother, along with the family’s attorney, Brian Mildenberg, spoke to reporters Thursday afternoon and said they expect to file a civil rights lawsuit.
“Like any mother, I choked and I cried,” Dickerson said when she found out that charges would not be filed.
Mildenberg said the family is questioning why Tate-Brown was pulled over and whether the use of force was justified.
The officer and his partner were not wounded in the incident in the city’s Mayfair section. Police said the officer was placed on administrative duty pending the outcome of the investigation.
There were 29 officer-involved shooting in Philadelphia last year. Four of them involved a suspect being killed.
A woman marching in Philadelphia on Martin Luther King Jr. Day carried a sign bearing Tate-Brown’s name as others chanted “Black lives matter!” to protest police killings of black men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York.
Ramsey, after the melee Thursday, said he agreed with their sentiment but not their tactics.
“Black lives matter,” he said. “They have a legitimate issue and the way to get the issue heard is not the way it went down tonight.”
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Why he was he pulled over the mother asks? Answer was given no headlights at 2 in the morning.
Why he was shot? He numerous times tried to get in his vehicle to get a handgun.
This guy was a convicted criminal banned from ownership and possession of guns.
Completely justified shooting of a criminal who caused harm to his community.
Black lives matter? The slogan these people chant needs to be changed for accuracy to “Black Thugs deserve to Live and get away with killing cops and white people in general”.
My problem with lumping cases like this in with actual outrages like the brutal beating of a black student in Virginia is that it gives a forum for racists to jump in and spread their hatred against people of color and other cultures.
Sometimes the cops have to protect the themselves from citizens. Sometimes the citizens need protection from the cops.
We need to have mechanisms that allow us to better identify which type of case we are dealing with, and to ignore the provocateurs who try to exploit these tragedies for other purposes.
Not surprising to see that kind of nonsense coming from someone with “Birmingham” in their moniker. None of what you said matters. ALL that matters is what the video shows and what happened at the moments of the shooting.
Tate having a gun when he was not supposed to does not justify the shooting.
Tate being a “thug” does not justify the shooting.
Tate driving with his headlights off at 2 a.m. does not justify the shooting.
Tate being a convicted criminal who had served his time and was out on parole does not justify the shooting.
Tate having previously caused harm to his community does not justify the shooting.
And your fucking nonsense about “killing cops and white people in general” is just racist delusion talk that has nothing to do with what occurred. He had never killed anybody.
Your post can be summed up as follows: “Anyone who I consider a black ‘thug’ should be shot and killed. The police should consider it open season on them and they are justified in shooting them no matter what.”
Is the throwing chairs, etc., an appropriate response? Not really. But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that if it wasn’t demonstrably proven that, whether or not this particular case has evidence that the shooting was justified at the time it occurred, there are myriad cases that clearly do not and in which the black person who was shot was shot primarily because racist white douchenozzles like you are wearing uniforms and assume that any black person is automatically a “thug” and more of a threat and dangerous than any white person they pull over. Racists who believe they need to put black people in their place and who deliberately escalate any “routine stop” or other encounter…while they treat white people with kid gloves and respect when they pull them over. Those are facts. And if you want the black community to stop responding with outrage, even when the shooting appears to have been justified, then all the unjustified ones have to stop, all the deliberate escalation has to stop, all the disrespect and authoritarian bullying has to stop, all the inequitable enforcement and targeting of minorities for minor infractions that a white person would never be ticketed or arrested for has to stop, etc.
Now, run along back to Red State, Faux and Breitbart and jerk your little white dick until it’s blue while commiserating with your fellow racists. You’re nothing but a reactionary troll.
Lol. White people tend to get treated with kid gloves during traffic stops is because the white drivers don’t give the cops an attitude.
“there are myriad cases that clearly do not”
You may want to read the following. "Based on FBI data of cop killers 289 cop killers have been white and 243 black. (If one really is looked for a group to scapegoat, 98 percent of cop killers are men.) "
Adjusting for population, black men, overall, are 5 times more likely than white men to kill police officers."
" Of those killed by police, 32 percent are black and 64 percent are white. While the percentage of blacks killed is high compared with the black percentage in America (13%), it is low compared with other indicators of violence, such as the percentage of homicide victims and offenders believed to be African American (both 48%)
Perhaps it is more useful to compare police-involved shootings with those killed by non-police officers. Among “justifiable homicides” by regular citizens—about 210 a year—African-Americans are 40 percent of those who kill and 56 percent of those killed. Compared with these numbers, police seem restrained in their use of force toward the black community. "
http://www.copinthehood.com/2008/02/police-involved-shootings-and-race.html
http://www.copinthehood.com/2014/12/police-killing-whites-and-blacks.html
Actual non biased stduies shows Police are far more likely to shoot a white person. That police show excessive restraint in shooting black people. That black cops are more likely to kill a black person then a white cop would. That black civilians are far more likely to kill an innocent black person then a white cop.
So by logic and reality black Americans are the most racist people in the US.
The video shows resisting arrest and going for the gun. Hence justified shooting. Once again Blacks Live Matter is not an accurate slogan.
Nor is Hands up don’t shoot and Eric Holder admitted that.