Yet another cop murder of an unarmed person with some form of mental illness.
We go through this all the time — well, several times a week — in America: cops arrive on a scene, mentally-ill person doesn’t cooperate in a nanosecond and gets treated to a hail of gunfire from the cops.
This particular and vile incident took place in September of 2015. This is in the news now because the cop bodycam video has been released.
Fresno, CA — On September 3, 2015 at approximately 11:00 a.m., Fresno Police Officers, Zebulon Price and Felipe Miguel Lucero shot 40-year-old Freddy Centeno seven times causing severe injuries. Mr. Centeno was unarmed, was wearing shorts, no shirt on, and walking along the street when he was approached by Fresno Police who immediately started shooting
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Fresno police Chief Jerry Dyer told The Fresno Bee that the video he reviewed showed the officers giving Centeno multiple commands and that he reached for his waistband. However, none of that is evident in the video below and, the officers gave him almost no time to comply.
Of course, this video completely undermined the police’s assertions.
Again.
This happens most of the time, too, but this situation is particularly egregious.
The cops arrived and pretty much just started shooting at him. He fell to the ground (from being shot seven times) and the cops then start screaming at him to put his hands up.
So, first, here is the initial 911 call:
Yes, the 911 call reports concerns about a gun. The lady says a small black one. The cops double-check her info. So yes, I am aware they were on the lookout for a man with a gun who is acting erratically. I get that.
Below is the very graphic video from the officer’s body cameras showing them arriving and opening fire almost immediately—proving to me how worthless these cameras are. More about that in a minute.
What you see here is simply uncalled for. It is as graphic as it gets. Some people might not even want to watch.
Cops arrived, exited their car and began firing. Nothing at all like Mr. Police Chief alleges.
They immediately fired nine rounds, hitting him seven times, and then when he is laying on the ground they start screaming at him to put his hands up. Beyond the sandard police brutality and murderousness, this is just bizarre.
He was reported to have been in a coma for 20 hours before succumbing to his wounds.
Mr. Centeno’s family had been trying to get help for him and were repeatedly denied, even though he was in the midst of a psychotic break.
According to Roger Centeno, the victim’s brother, Freddy is bipolar and schizophrenic and abused drugs. The family had been asking the city and county for help and were told “something needs to happen” before Freddy could get help.
“Is this what needs to happen?” asked Roger, after the shooting.
We can righteously blame the savaging of the safety net and mental health services, but cops do a notoriously — and needlessly — crappy job intervening with the mentally ill, which account at least ¼ of the people they encounter. This is the interaction of 2 large issues, both of which need correction and improvements, both of which cost m-o-n-e-y. Which is why they aren’t getting fixed any time soon.
And it sorely needs to be: The Washington Post published a story last year called Distraught people,Deadly results:
Nationwide, police have shot and killed 124 people this year who, like Page, were in the throes of mental or emotional crisis, according to a Washington Post analysis. The dead account for a quarter of the 462 people shot to death by police in the first six months of 2015.
The vast majority were armed, but in most cases, the police officers who shot them were not responding to reports of a crime. More often, the police officers were called by relatives, neighbors or other bystanders worried that a mentally fragile person was behaving erratically, reports show. More than 50 people were explicitly suicidal.
More than half the killings involved police agencies that have not provided their officers with state-of-the-art training to deal with the mentally ill. And in many cases, officers responded with tactics that quickly made a volatile situation even more dangerous.
The bolding there is mine to emphasize that this is exactly what happened with these two cops arriving on the scene with Mr. Centeno. They roll up, get out and pretty much start blasting away.
It is, to me, clear incompetence, all other things being equal. Total incompetence and THAT is why they rolled up and opened fire without the first provocation.
This event highlights what’s reported from the studies, ie cops not getting the best training and responding with tactics that escalate the situation needlessly.
Also, very clearly, bodycams did NOT protect Mr. Centeno. They did exactly nothing to help officers not shoot first and then make demands.
Sure, we could theoretically convict these incompetent cowboys with this footage, but I have not seen anything in the reports I have read that suggest these cops will get so much as a slap on the wrist.
I want cops to NOT shoot people first and then make demands — I want people protected from incompetent, gun-waving cops.
And here’s another bit of evidence illustrating how systemic this problem is: their chief of police is defending this incompetent killing of Mr. Centeno, falling back on simply lying about what happened, hoping that nobody will notice.
Dyer held his own news conference later in the day and walked reporters through the raw video, freezing it at specific times and pointing out exactly when Centeno reached into his pocket, grabbed a black object, pulled it out and slightly raised his hands.
Dyer said he had watched the video at least 25 times, and each time he believed Centeno was drawing a weapon. He stressed that the information the officers had, based on a 911 call also played Thursday at the Dyer news conference, was that Centeno was armed with a small black handgun in the pocket of his shorts.
It turned out to be a painted garden hose nozzle.
If any one of us shot somebody with the same lame defensive argument cops CONSTANTLY use, we would not be let off the hook as easily as they are.
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I learned years ago that, often, people communicate very poorly. Information gets twisted, something gets amplified, somethings get buried. I have seen—over and over—a non-threatening situation built up into a crisis by anxious, histrionic people, blowing things WAY out of proportion and then people react to the frenzy and not the reality.
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Cops are simply trigger-happy: there’s no other way to say it. They live by the gun, they think guns solve everything that immediate compliance with their god-like demands doesn’t solve. It is this primitive, knuckle-dragging mentality that has to be educated out of the police force nationwide.
One-fucking-fourth of the people cops shoot are mentally ill and probably more than that. This is a training issue: as you can see from these incompetent cops, they just roll up and start shooting. This is not acceptable.
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If they are going to have cities paying MILLIONS of dollars out in lawsuits every single year, cities can spend some of that money preemptively and train officers better.
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I have worked in mental health my entire life and never hurt, let alone killed, anybody. Yes, I have been attacked: I was able to manage the situations without getting hurt and without hurting the attacker. It CAN be done, if you know what you are doing.