Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
Questions surround fatal police shooting
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police took the rare step of charging one of their own with voluntary manslaughter after homicide investigators first detailed the case to top commanders “so there would be no ambiguity,” the city manager said Sunday.
The department moved swiftly, charging Officer Randall Kerrick 19 hours after the Saturday incident. It was the first time in decades an officer had been charged with killing someone in the line of duty.
Kerrick is accused of unlawfully shooting Jonathan Ferrell, 24, a former Florida A&M football player who may have been seeking help after a car wreck. He was unarmed when he ran toward officers in the Bradfield Farms neighborhood in northeast Mecklenburg County.
Meanwhile, the NAACP plans a news conference early Monday afternoon, and the attorney representing Ferrell’s family says he will be in Charlotte on Monday. The attorney, Christopher Chestnut, appeared Monday morning with Ferrell’s mother Georgia on CNN and questioned Charlotte-Mecklenburg police training methods and the response of a woman who lives in the house where Ferrell sought help early Saturday.
The speed of the decision to charge Kerrick stands in sharp contrast to prior officer-involved shooting investigations in recent years, which have taken weeks or months to resolve. Two experts in police use of force told the Observer they’d never seen a police officer charged so soon after a shooting.
Ferrell’s family is planning a Monday press conference. Chestnut, their attorney, specializes in wrongful death lawsuits.
The news agency Reuters quoted Chestnut as saying he wonders if race played a role in the shooting.
“If Mr. Ferrell was not black or brown, wouldn’t they have asked him a few questions before showering him with bullets?” Chestnut told Reuters.
In an appearance on CNN on Monday morning, Ferrell’s mother Georgia said there is no explanation for why police shot her son.
“Jonathan was very happy,” she said. “We talked every morning. He called me (Saturday) before he went to his second job. He was very happy.”
Ferrell’s brother Willie told CNN, “He was always happy. It was hard to get him upset.”
Chestnut told CNN he “applauds the arrest” and charges filed against Kerrick but says “there are many other unanswered questions.”
“Why did this officer have a badge and gun?” he asked, adding that CMPD training procedures might need to be reviewed.
And, referring to the woman who answered the door where Ferrell knocked after his car wreck, Chestnut said, “Why did the woman assume it was a robber?”
Police said he drove a black Toyota Camry down a street that leads to the community’s pool, clubhouse and tennis courts. But the car crashed into an embankment about 2 a.m., police said. Investigators said they found no indication of alcohol use, but are waiting for toxicology tests.
Ferrell apparently climbed out of the back window of his mangled car, police said. It was unclear whether he was injured, but he walked to a house just visible over the crest of a hill, about a quarter-mile away.
He started “banging on the door viciously,” according to Monroe.
The woman who lives there at first thought the man knocking on the door was her husband, coming home late from work. But police said when she saw Ferrell, she thought he was a robber. She dialed 911, asking for officers to come to her home in the 7500 block of Reedy Creek Road.
About 2:30 a.m., three Hickory Grove division officers responded to the call – Kerrick, 27, who’s been an officer since April 2011; Thornell Little, who joined the department in April 1998; and Adam Neal, who’s been an officer since May 2008.
They encountered Ferrell a short distance from the home, police said.
As the officers got out of their car, “Mr. Ferrell immediately ran toward the officers,” according to a police statement. It said Ferrell moved toward Kerrick.
Little fired his Taser, but police said it was unsuccessful.
Police said Kerrick fired “several” rounds, striking Ferrell “multiple times.” He died at the scene.
Ferrell had no criminal record in North Carolina and a 2011 misdemeanor charge in Florida that was dismissed.
911 call released in NC athlete shooting
CHARLOTTE, NC (CBS) -- New developments in the case of an unarmed North Carolina man. He was shot to death by a police officer who is now criminally charged. This morning, a 911 call was released that could be a crucial piece of evidence in the chain of events.
Jonathan Ferrell, 24, was apparently looking for help after he crashed his car into a wooded neighborhood on Saturday. He knocked on the front door of this nearby house. But it was 2:30 in the morning. The homeowner mistook him for a burglar, and dialed 911.
Police disguised the homeowner's voice to protect her identity.
Randall Kerrick was one of three police officers who responded. When Ferrell ran toward them, Kerrick drew his gun and shot Ferrell ten times. The 24-year-old died at the scene. He was unarmed.
Kerrick was charged with voluntary manslaughter. Michael Greene is his defense attorney. He says, "We're confident that at the resolution of this case it will be found that officer Kerrick's actions were justified on the night in question."
A police cruiser at the scene recorded part of the confrontation on its dashboard camera. Police showed the video to Ferrell's family and their lawyer Chris Chestnut. He says, "He approaches them, and as he's walking up to them, you see two red lights on his chest, from a taser. And then I think he goes forward, it's difficult to- I believe he said "stop, stop, stop," like wait, don't shoot me. And then he's off camera and there are shots."
Farrell played football for two years at Florida A&M University. Ferrell's family plans to sue the Charlotte Police Force. Jonathan's brother Willie says, "I know for a fact that he wouldn't be going with anger towards them in rage."
Funeral arrangements for Ferrell are now underway. If convicted, Kerrick faces 17 years behind bars.
For Whites (Like Me): We Are Not Ignorant
"Mad," "angry," even "outraged" just don't capture it. So, I realize it's not a very nice word but I'm pissed.
We get "pissed" at someone or something. It is targeted and specific. It's directed. It's sharp.
And I'm pissed about the death of Jonathan Ferrell.
Tragedies upset us. Life is hard and people suffer, sometimes cruelly. As a parent now, when young people die by illness or accident my "the universe can be so brutal and unfair" antennae tunes in so hard it hurts.
But this is worse, because it is not that kind of tragedy. This is not an accident.
And we are not ignorant.
In case you didn't hear, here's the story. Farrell (age 24) was in a horrific car accident, had to climb out of his back window to escape his vehicle, walked a half-mile for help, only to have the woman behind the door he knocked on call 911. When the police showed up, one of them shot him dead.
I don't know the woman's race. (I could speculate.)
I don't know the police officer's race. (He looks white.)
I know Jonathan Ferrell's race. (He was Black.)
I also know that police reports are already reciting the predictable repeating lines in the prewritten script that is almost always found when unarmed Black and Latino men are killed by police officers. The predictability only adds to how suspicious the lines are just on their own accord. Like in Scene 1 where for some reason (so the script goes) an innocent, unarmed young man "charged at officers," somehow able to do so even "after being tasered." Scene 2 usually includes botched evidence, Scene 3 a case thrown out on legal technicalities by the grand jury. If we get a Scene 4 it's officer(s) "innocent" with apologies to his family for their ordeal.
Curtain closes.
Maybe we'll get a different result this time. Unusually, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has actually stated that the use of force here was unwarranted. Maybe.
But even if we do, Ferrell is still dead.
And here's the point: We know that this keeps happening, over and over and over again. Even we white folks know it.
We are not ignorant.
Many of us white folks get pissed when we hear another of these preventable tragedies (the "preventable" moving it from tragedy to injustice) has happened again. But after Trayvon Martin was murdered and Zimmerman set free how many of us moved our bodies in response?
Because, here we are again.
This is not an accusation, I swear. (No self-righteousness here. I haven't been active on this since moving to my city in 2004.)
It's a plea.
I know we white folks feel helpless about what to do. I get that.
But this helplessness is learned. It's chosen. And if we know it's going to happen again (which we do) we've go(t) to unchoose it!
Last weekend I facilitated an antiracism workshop. When asked why she came, one white participant explained that for a long time she thought things were hunky dory in our post-Civil Rights world. Then at some point realized this was a lie. After that, she said, she spent a lot of time in anger and despair.
Recently she told us, she made a decision: "I've decided to start acting like there's something I can do about it."
This was one of the best things I've heard a white person say in a long, long time.
There are organizations in endless neighborhoods, towns, cities in which Black and Latino communities are at work actively trying to end this kind of violence. Trying desperately to protect their children. They do so in most cases without the active, allied, solidarity of those of us who are white and who claim to care.
The same police department that will check to make sure I have the car seat installed correctly for my babies causes these families to live in fear for their babies' lives. The same department that sponsors "Safety Town" so my kids will know how to safely ride their bikes causes these families to teach their 16 year-olds how to more safely drive their cars: by knowing ahead of time they will be pulled over and how to comport themselves when it happens (the Black version of Safety Town).
I hate that this is true.
After one mother shared the most recent experience of her 21-year old, honor's list, college graduate, no-charges-of-any-kind-ever, fully-employed son who has been stopped "more times than I can keep track of on my hands and feet" a local pastor stood up. "I'm Isaac's pastor," she said. And, breaking into tears, "I thank God Isaac handled himself [at midnight, handcuffed because (official explanation) he was "acting nervous" when three white officers with guns pulled him over for no citable reason (Acting nervous? Go figure.)]. Otherwise I might have been doing his funeral today."
We are not ignorant.
Steven Biko, the South African Black Consciousness activist, hero and martyr, also killed by police once compared liberal, anti-apartheid (but inactive) whites and pro-apartheid whites, saying:
In any case, even if there was a real fundamental difference in thinking amongst whites vis-à-vis blacks, the very fact that those disgruntled whites remain to enjoy the fruits of the System would alone be enough to condemn them at Nuremburg. Listen to Karl Jaspers . . . 'There exists amongst men [sic], because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence of which he cannot be ignorant. If I do not do whatever I can to prevent them, I am an accomplice in them. . . .' Thus if whites in general do not like what is happening to the black people, they have the power in them to stop it here and now. We, on the other hand, have every reason to bundle them together and blame them jointly.
No difference among whites? Is this what we want? What do we want?
Besides knowing we can unchoose helplessness, we need to know that if we are not ignorant and we do nothing we allow these deaths. We are accomplices.
Hating that this happened is not enough. We have the power to be part of stopping it here and now. Not by ourselves. Not by going (white) solo. Not with an expectation that all of it in one fell swoop will end tomorrow if we show up.
But if we hate this, we whites need to find out where and when folks are already fighting it right where we live, fighting because their babies' lives are on the line. Every day.
We are not ignorant. And, thus we can't be declared innocent.
But we can start acting like there's something we can do about it.
One account states that he "viciously" pounded on her door. The 911 caller even claimed he was "breaking down" the front door despite the fact that she opened the door. That he "ran" at the 3 police officers. That they even tried to taser him as he was supposedly running directly at them.
The other account paints an entirely different story based on the unreleased dashboard cam video. That he merely knocked on the door after having a car accident at 2:30 in the morning. That he was walking towards the cops while stating "stop, stop stop" and "wait, don't shoot me".
One thing we do know. One of the cops shot him 10 times...
Do you think it is time to try to finally end these incidents? That by not doing so that we are all "accomplices"? That the victims of white racism have a reason to "bundle them together and blame them jointly"?
