SENATOBIA, Miss.—People scattered in a Walmart parking lot on Tuesday as law enforcement officers, who were wearing gas masks and lined up under the store’s grocery-side entrance, unleashed tear gas on the crowd that had gathered to protest the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley.
Two days earlier on June 14, the young Black child died after a Senatobia police officer fired into a moving car, killing him and injuring the driver. Officers, who had been responding to a call alleging that someone had tried to steal a box of diapers, claimed that the car was driving toward the officer when he fired—a claim that some witnesses have disputed.
This is the latest among several incidents illustrating the need for better rules for how police interact with people in cars:
- Police should not stand in the path of a car, especially to try to detain the driver. That’s dangerous, and creates a pretext for violence.
- Police should not shoot at cars because they believe the car is about to hit someone. The probability of hitting bystanders is elevated, and successfully killing the driver renders the car uncontrolled, not immobile.
Incidents where someone is continually trying to use a car as a weapon rather than to escape may justify shooting at the car, but they are rare.
It’s always stupid because they should be able to understand that bullets will not stop a car. There’s no justification in the vast majority of the cases where cops spray bullets at cars, and it often results in the shooting of innocent bystanders.
Many years back there was an incident local cop who shot at a car’s tires to try to stop someone, and one of their bullets bounced off the tire and was returned to sender - the cop shot himself by ricochet. He survived as it wasn’t a vital hit, but I bet he didn’t shoot at anymore cars.
Just because we are on the subject, I’m guessing they sell tools to quickly puncture tires which can fit in a police man’s belt. It would be insanely safer and more effecient.
If they didn’t actually take the item out of the store without paying for it, they didn’t break the law.
Also, based on that call, the officers knew for sure there was probably going to be an infant in the car they recklessly fired into.
People should just shoot cops first and claim said defense. It’s the same thing they’ll do to you. No one hears your side of the story when you’re dead.
Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6. Only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
By the cops own logic we should be shooting cops on sight to make the streets safer.
I used to not want jury duty, but now I cant wait for the next time.
Same here. My wife gets jury duty almost annually, and has served on a murder trial. It’s been like a decade since I had to show up
