Comply with officers and reach for identification as ordered: shot.
Don’t move out of fear of getting shot: shot.
Lay flat on the ground with your hands in the air: still shot?!
Just weeks after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by the hands of law enforcement, another unarmed Black man was shot by police.
On July 18th, 23 year old autistic patient escaped from an assisted-living facility. The autistic patient named Rinaldo escaped Miami’s MacTown Panther Group Homes and was blocking traffic near Northeast 14th Avenue and Northeast 127th Street as he sat in the middle of the street, playing with a white toy truck.
His behavioral specialist, a Black man named Charles Kinsey, went to retrieve him.
Police were called to the scene after being told an armed man was threatening suicide. They drew their assault rifles at the two men in the street.
“I was really more worried about him than myself”, says Charles Kinsey.
Kinsey complied with the officers, laid flat on the ground with his hands in the air. While laying there, he tried to talk Rinaldo into doing the same:
“Please be still … get down … lay on your stomach,” Kinsey said to the patient, who sat beside him in the street rocking back and forth.
“Shut up” Rinaldo shouts,”Shut up, you idiot!”
Kinsey continued begging officers not to shoot his patient, telling them Rinaldo was unarmed and holding a toy truck.
“All he has is a toy truck in his hand. “That’s all it is. “There is no need for guns”, Kinsey yells to officers standing approximately 30 feet away aiming their weapons at him and Rinaldo.
“I am a behavioral therapist at a group home”.
“Let me see your hands,” a cop shouts at Rinaldo, the autistic patient. “Get on the ground! Get on the ground!”
Rinaldo continued to play with his toy. According to a manager at MacTown Panther Group Homes, Rinaldo is “relatively low-functioning” and usually “nonverbal”.
“Rinaldo, please be still,” Kinsey tells his patient. “Sit down, Rinaldo. Lay on your stomach.”
With Kinsey’s hands still in the air, the officer fired off 2-3 shots, striking Kinsey with a bullet in his right knee, leaving his upper thigh.
“As long as I’ve got my hands up, they’re not gonna shoot me, that’s what I’m thinking,” Kinsey said. “Wow, was I wrong.”
Kinsey was then flipped over and handcuffed after being shot. He was then left bleeding on the hot concrete for 20 minutes before help arrived.
“My life flashed in front of me”, Kinsey tells WSVN reporters from his hospital bed.
“When he hit me, I’m like, I still got my hands in the air”.
“I’m like, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ ” Kinsey said he asked the officer.
“He said to me, ‘I don’t know.’
Why Did The Cop pull The Trigger?
The cop, who has not yet been identified, apologizes to Kinsey, claiming he was aiming for Rinaldo:
“I took this job to save lives and help people. I did what I had to do in a split-second to accomplish that. And hate to hear others paint me as something I am not”, says the officer in a statement read by a police union rep.
At a Thursday press conference the Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association President John Rivera told reporters the officers were trying to help Kinsey:
“There was a call about a suicidal man with a gun, the officers already heard that. When they arrived they saw two men, Mr. Kinsey and the other individual, the white male, and it appeared to the officers that the white male was trying to do harm to Mr. Kinsey.
The officers, realizing and believing that there was a firearm, and many officers thought the white male had a firearm, only much later do we find out it was a toy.
Only much later do we find out that the individual was autistic. The officers on the scene did not do that. And fearing for Mr. Kinsey’s life, the officer discharged his firearm, trying to save Mr. Kinsey’s life. And he missed, and accidentally struck Mr. Kinsey.
He thought the white male and his actions were such that he felt Mr. Kinsey’s life was in danger”.
If the cop was aiming for Rinaldo, why was his caretaker handcuffed after being shot?
Rivera also asks for sympathy for the officer, as being a police officer is hard:
“Folks, being a police officer has always been difficult. And lately, it’s been more difficult, and more challenging. Sometimes police officers do wrong and we let the system work.
And sometimes police officers do right and we still crucify them. And then sometimes police officers make mistakes because at the end of the day, they’re not computers, they’re not robots, they are God’s creation and they make mistakes.”
What Happens Next?
North Miami police Chief Gary Eugene is asking the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to take over the investigation of the shooting:
“Bringing in an outside agency assures our commitment to transparency and objectivity in a very sensitive matter. I realize there may be questions about what happened on Monday night. You have questions. The community has questions.
… I, personally, have questions. I assure you, we’ll get all the answers,” the police chief told reporters Thursday.
Press conference held regarding North Miami Police involved shooting with caretaker https://t.co/M6UwV0S9Tw
— WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) July 21, 2016
Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon II is working out a settlement with the city and ask for the officer to be fired:
“They realize this was something inappropriate regarding the shooting. If police departments come out more and admit fault, that would probably go a long way”, says Napoleon .
“The reality is that he believed … that if you comply with the police and you lay on the ground with your hands up, and if you speak to them like my client was speaking to them, as Americans, we try to believe that that will not result in you getting shot,” Napoleon said.
Now Kinsey, his attorney said, doesn’t know what to tell his children.
“Physically, he will recover, but mentally, he felt like he did everything he could possibly do and that wasn’t good enough,” Napoleon said.
“You can’t shoot unarmed people, period”.