The North Miami cop who shot an unarmed African-American man lying in the street with his arms in the air earlier this week has been identified by police.
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Officials said Friday Officer Aledda shot Charles Kinsey who was assisting a 24-year-old autistic patient that wandered away from an assisted living facility.
The identity of a North Miami police officer in Florida who this week shot an unarmed black man who appeared to be surrendering with his hands raised has been revealed.
The report notes, “Due to the fact that many standards were uncompleted and inconclusive, the numbers of non-compliance or corrective actions were unknown”.
An investigation of the shooting conducted by the local state’s attorney office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is still ongoing, according to NPR.
Kinsey was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
John Rivera, the president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, said Thursday afternoon that the officers “saw the white male nearly on top of Mr. Kinsey, who had his hands up and who had his knees up, and to the officers, it looked like the white male was about to shoot Mr. Kinsey”, Rivera said.
Taken by someone who lives in an apartment complex adjacent to where Kinsey was shot, Napoleon said he received it in two parts.
Hollant’s suspension comes only a week after he was promoted to commander during the same ceremony in which Gary Eugene was sworn in as North Miami’s new police chief.
The officer who fired three rounds, striking Kinsey once in the leg, was identified Friday as Jonathan Aledda, a SWAT team member and four-year veteran of the department who had been singled out in the past for his tenacity and police work.
“Fearing for Mr. Kinsey’s life, [Aledda] discharged his firearm”, Rivera said during a news conference Thursday. Kinsey told officers the man wasn’t unsafe, and was only holding a toy truck. But that’s a tall order in a climate of heightened racial tension and outrage over recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, coupled with lethal attacks on police in Texas and Louisiana.
Kinsey’s attorney claims that Aledda told his client that he didn’t know why he shot him, but the PBA insists that Aledda had no contact or communication with Kinsey after the shooting. There is no need for guns. The officer called for his supervisor, Ortiz, who handcuffed him and searched the auto.
If an officer doesn’t recognize that behaviour as autism, he could think the person is talking back. Only much later, when we’re able to ‘Monday-morning quarterback, ‘ do we find out that it’s a toy.
FDLE has taken over the investigation while Kinsey’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon, told 7News the city has already reached out about a cash settlement. The Black Lives Matter movement has focused attention and political muscle on the issue of police use of excessive force against black people, and in this case, that phenomenon might just have saved the life of a young autistic man.
“When he hit me, I’m like, I still got my hands in the air”, he said. Police were called into the scene because the autistic man was blocking traffic. Peering through his binoculars, he could see the object was a toy truck.
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The officers, he said, grabbed rifles from the patrol cars’ trunks and crept toward the men. Whether or not you believe the Magic Racist Bullet Theory (I don’t), there’s every reason to believe that without Mr. Kinsey’s intervention, that young man might be dead right now.
