But despite Kinsey doing everything in his power to make sure North Miami Police understand that he and his patient are not a threat, they shoot him anyway.
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Kinsey shouted to officers, who had their weapons drawn after receiving a 911 call about a man with a gun, that the object his client was holding was not a gun, but a toy truck. The video doesn’t show the exact moment police shot him, but his attorney told NBC Miami that he was handcuffed and left in the road until an ambulance arrived. Thursday night about 40 Black Lives Matter protestors stormed into the North Miami police department demanding that the officer who shot Kinsey be fired.
Kinsey said of the 23-year-old, “I was more anxious about him than myself”. He also urged his patient, who was sitting nearby, to lie down and be still.
“Rinaldo, please be still, Rinaldo”, he is heard saying on the video to the autistic man. “Sit down, Rinaldo, Lay on your stomach”.
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, condemned the shooting: “Thankfully, Mr. Kinsey is alive and not more gravely injured – but had the officer’s weapon been pointed just a few degrees differently, this senseless incident could have been a much greater tragedy”. And I’m telling him again, ‘Sir, there’s no need for firearms.
“I was more anxious about him than myself”, Kinsey told Channel 7 of the autistic man, whose name hasn’t been released. “A toy truck”, Kinsey told the officers.
An officer later fired three times, striking Kinsey in the leg, assistant police chief Neal Cuevas told the newspaper.
The shooting itself was not caught on video and the officer’s justification for shooting remains unknown.
He can be heard in the footage of the incident trying to explain the situation to the police. According to Kinsey’s lawyer Hilton Napoleon, Kinsey was told to get on the ground after he put his hands up. The officer responded, “I don’t know”, Kinsey said. While Kinsey recovers at the hospital, the North Miami Police Department held a press conference Thursday, according to the Miami Herald. “I was thinking as long as I have my hands up … they’re not going to shoot me”. I shudder to think about it.
I think the 2014 death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice is the police violence analogue. Rivera said the officer thought that the autistic man was attempting to harm Kinsey.
North Miami has a population of about 62,000 people, almost 60 percent African-American.
The shooting took place about a block from the MacTown Panther Group Home at 1365 NE 128th St. Two can be seen in the video, peering from behind utility poles about 75 feet away.
Witness, Thomas Matthews, 73, said he watched the lead up to the shooting through binoculars.
Kinsey added: “It was like a mosquito bite, and when it hit me, I’m like, ‘I still got my hands in the air, and I said, ‘No I just got shot!”
Previously, he justified the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by saying, “act like a thug and you’ll be treated like one” and called the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling “more than justified”.
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The shooting comes amid heightened tension in the US after gunmen killed eight law enforcement officers in the southern cities of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas.
