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| Michael Rosfeld (left) charged after killing unarmed teenager Antwan Rose by shooting him in the back |
And so begins the slow wait for justice and accountability that has become all too familiar for those American families who've lost sons, daughters, sisters and fathers to unjustified killings by overzealous members of law enforcement.
The circumstances surrounding this latest unarmed American teenager's death are at once familiar, murky and unsettling on many levels.
As journalist Tom Cleary reported in an article for Heavy.com, Antwan Rose was a passenger inside an unlicensed "jitney" cab that was pulled over by East Pittsburgh PD officers because it supposedly fit the description of a vehicle that had been involved in a drive-by shooting in the nearby area of Braddock, PA just a few minutes earlier.
When officers removed the cab driver from the vehicle and handcuffed him to question him, Rose and another passenger opened the passenger side doors and tried to flee the scene.
Almost immediately, Officer Rosfeld pointed his handgun and fired three shots, striking both passengers - take a look at the cell phone video captured by a witness posted on Youtube and watch how quickly Rosfeld starts shooting.
The video is only a few seconds long, and it's not bloody or anything, watch it a couple times - it's pretty clear that the two are running away, not towards the officer, they weren't threatening his life.
Rose was hit in the back and died at the hospital later that evening. The driver of the cab was later released after being questioned - his vehicle had not been involved any kind of shooting as officers suspected before pulling him over in the residential neighborhood where the shooting took place.
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| Hundreds protest Antwan Rose's shooting in front of the Allegheny County courthouse on June 22nd |
"it's an intentional act and there's no justification for it. You do not shoot somebody in the back if they are not a threat to you."
The shooting sparked outrage, and protests and acts of civil disobedience have been taking place since the shooting took place eleven days ago.
While Rosfeld's attorneys are certain to try and use the defense that the officer "felt threatened" by two young men running away from him, the officer's competence has to come into question as he had literally just been sworn in as a part-time East Pittsburgh PD officer an hour and forty minutes before he shot an unarmed teenager running away from him.
He'd also been fired by the University of Pittsburgh campus police for undisclosed reasons prior to being hired by East Pittsburgh PD.
Antwan Rose wasn't some thuggish, violence-prone juvenile delinquent as some American police departments try to retroactively portray young men that are shot on sight because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity in order to try and justify an unjustified shooting.
From the numerous accounts of those in the East Pittsburgh community who knew him have noted publicly in the wake of the shooting, this was a good kid from a good family who was well respected.
He took Advanced Placement (AP) classes and was headed into his senior year with a strong academic record.
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| Antwan Rose (center) in an undated prom photo |
He also had lasting impact on his local community outside of school as well.
After the shooting Gisele Fetterman, the wife of Braddock, PA Mayor John Fetterman wrote on her Facebook page that Rose had volunteered for a local non-profit charity called Freestore 15104 that she runs when he was just fourteen-years-old.
During his summer vacation no less.
As Fetterman observed, "His life was just starting, he was part of a wonderful family and he was SO LOVED by so many and he didn't deserve this."
This was a motivated kid whose self-discipline is reflected not only in his academic record and volunteer work but also in the fact that he also held down jobs to make extra money from the time that he was at least fourteen-years-old.
Pittsburgh Gymnastics Club owner Kim Ransom told the New York Times that she remembered Rose coming in for an interview on a hot summer day back in 2015 when he fourteen:
"He brought his type-up resume and he was wearing a full three-piece suit with his shiny shoes and he was sweating profusely."
How does a well-liked high school kid like that from a good family end up getting shot in the back?
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| 26-year-old Diante Yarber and a young protester |
In Barstow, California back on April 5th, a 26-year-old father of three named Diante Yarber was fatally shot ten times at point blank range by four Barstow Police Department officers.
He was killed in the parking lot of a Walmart during broad daylight.
Yarber (pictured above) was wanted on suspicion of car theft when BPD officers spotted his Ford Mustang, recognized him as a suspect, stopped the vehicle and approached the driver's side door.
Yarber allegedly attempted to flee the scene with his brother, cousin and girlfriend inside the car.
Police claim the shooting was prompted when the Ford Mustang he was driving hit one of the police cruisers as he attempted to back up and drive off.
Even though Yarber was unarmed, according to a statement by Barstow Police Department Chief Albert Ramirez, Jr., four BPD officers at the scene pulled out their weapons and unloaded about 30 shots into the car because they "feared for their safety and the safety of others".
Ten of those shots struck Yarber in the chest, back and arms, and his girlfriend, who was sitting in the backseat, was hit in the abdomen and leg, while his brother and cousin escaped injury.
Defense attorney S. Lee Merritt described the gunshots that struck Yarber as being "consistent with defensive wounds...as he was shielding himself and trying to escape the onslaught of bullets" according to the findings of an independent medical examiner hired by Yarber's family.
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| Jeff Sessions during Senate confirmation hearings for Attorney General back in January of 2017 |
Is that smart, effective policing or hair-trigger overreaction based on skin color?
Now after thinking about these two cases, my initial thoughts were actually about Attorney General Jeff Sessions - the nation's top law enforcement authority.
Given that he defended himself against multiple charges of racism that were leveled against him during his tenure as a federal prosecutor in Alabama during contentious Senate hearings for his failed nomination to the federal bench back in 1986, one might think one of Session's first major public announcements as Trump's AG might be something conciliatory.
Something to demonstrate that he's not the bigot his own words and actions showed him to be.
But no, once he managed to squeak through the hearings process and was sworn in as AG, one of his first major initiatives was to announce that the Department of Justice was "reviewing" the various consent decrees that President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder signed with various police departments around the country.
While many around the country saw those consent decrees as a reasonable step to address the rampant, unchecked abuse of police power used overwhelmingly against people of color, Sessions and Trump viewed the decrees exclusively through the narrow lens of the right-wing ideology that drove Trump's presidential campaign.
And of course Trump's bizarre obsession with trying to undue as many of President Obama's executive and legislative achievements as humanly possible; even when they're in the interests of the vast majority of the American people or the environment.
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| Baltimore City Council members proposing legislation that would give them oversight over Baltimore PD |
"undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing [it's] work."
Even as Sessions moved to delay and roll back the decrees in the spring and summer of 2017, some police officials and city leaders, as in Baltimore, voiced support for remaining committed to the decrees signed with DOJ.
Remember, Freddie Gray was arrested for having what Baltimore PD claimed was "an illegal knife" and he ended up dying of a broken neck while in the custody of BPD officers.
Not one of the six officers charged with his death were held accountable for Gray's death in a police van. Not one.
And Jeff Sessions claims consent decrees that would establish reasonable federal oversight of the BPD would "undermine the respect for police officers"? Really?
Those consent decrees, voluntary agreements signed between local police forces with proven patterns of entrenched, racially-biased policing practices and the Department of Justice, were intended (in part) as a remedy to bring a measure of federal oversight to try and address the wave of instances of excessive use of physical and deadly force against people of color.
And address rampant police misconduct in those departments where it's shown to be systematic.
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| Not 1 of the 6 Baltimore cops responsible for Freddie Gray's 2015 death were found guilty |
Sessions and the Trump administration tried to frame the decrees in the all-too-familiar conservative light of "federal overreach".
But as a June 12, 2017 Op-Ed in The Baltimore Sun noted, the consent decrees were not forced upon local police forces, rather they were intended as:
"legal agreements between themselves and the DOJ to implement specified reforms. The agreements are the penultimate step, short of a protracted trial, that police departments can take to correct problems such as rampant racial discrimination, stop-and-frisk abuses, and inadequate accountability mechanisms."
As I've often said, I'm no expert on policing, but it seems to me that unjustified shooting deaths of both Antwan Rose and Diante Yarber would at least indicate that there is still a clear need for at least some kind of pathway or room for reasonable federal oversight of police departments when it's warranted.
Sessions' decisions to revoke those consent decrees between local police departments and the Department of Justice are questionable at best - and at worst, indicative of the deep-seated racial bias that he's been accused of for years.
There's no certainty that any of the officers who took the lives of Antwan Rose and Diante Yarber will ever be held accountable for their deaths - the only thing that's certain is that they're both now members of The Counted.
And while the attorney general turns a blind eye to the reality of biased policing in America, the slow wait for justice and accountability continues.
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