Once again, a police officer has shot and killed an unarmed black person—this time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On Tuesday, Antwon Rose, Jr. was shot and killed by a member of the East Pittsburgh police force, after the officer stopped the car he was riding in because it matched the description of another car reportedly involved in a shooting. The incident was caught on video which shows Rose and another passenger running from the car as the driver was being arrested.
The officer shot three times. And apparently with precision, as all three shots hit Rose. He died later from his wounds.
Now, here’s where the story doesn’t quite add up. While Rose ended up dead and police officials say they are confident that he was involved in the shooting because they found guns in the car and a window that had been shot, they released the driver after questioning. The driver has not been charged. At the same time, Allegheny County Police Commissioner Coleman McDonough admitted that Rose was not armed and that neither he, nor the driver or other passenger, had shot at the officers.
We could ask why it is that an unarmed person, riding in a car, who was not the driver and was not threatening the officer would end up dead—particularly when the driver was already in custody. But we already know one obvious reason why Rose is dead. He was black and black people are considered targets by police, even when they are unarmed and even when they are running away from the police. We know this by the portion with which black people are killed by police everyday, especially when white male mass shooters have ended up in custody unscathed. But there is another reason why Rose was shot. It appears that the officer was literally on his first day on the job.
It must be scary to have your first day on the job involve stopping a car involved in a possible shooting. But that’s the nature of police work. If you can’t handle risk, critical thinking under pressure and maintaining the safety and preservation of human life, it’s not the job for you. Then again, there’s something about police training that seems to teach “shoot now, ask questions later.” And so many police officers get a thrill out of exerting control over the public rather than acting to keep them safe. Add unconscious (or not so unconscious) bias to the mix and its a dangerous combination. Fear of black people + lack of training and experience + ego/power trip=dead unarmed black folk.
So here we are, once again. Black lives do not matter to the state. This is why there are calls for justice across social media and protests outside of East Pittsburgh police headquarters. Black people want and deserve justice—especially when police use rumors and conjecture without proof to justify shooting unarmed black people. As civil rights attorney S. Lee Merritt said about the case: “We must emphasize that rumors of [Antwon] being involved in a separate shooting are unsubstantiated ... We know that he was not armed at the time he was shot down, that he posed no immediate threat to anyone.”