While we have heard much about Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police Aug. 9 while he had his hands up and was unarmed in Ferguson, Missouri, we have heard less about the St. Louis Police killing of another young black man just four miles from Ferguson and 10 days later -- that was actually captured on video. Click to see story and two videos -- one of police press conference and one unedited.
Kajiame Powell, age 25, was "acting crazy," according to a man who videoed the shooting and what preceded it. Powell took two sodas from a mini-mart, and when they did not confront him, he re-entered the store and stole something else. At that, someone from the store called the police, and another person from the store went out on the sidewalk and hollered after the man. Powell sat the two soda cans down on the curb and was walking around, nervously, it seemed. He had his right hand in his coat pocket part of the time.
When police pulled up, one yelled, "Take your hand out of your pocket." Powell did so right away. But, apparently he held a knife loosely in curled fingers of his right hand. "Shoot me, motherfucker," Powell said to the cops. He looked over his shoulder and saw that people were in the line of fire, and he moved.
Powell did not drop the knife, but he was not very close to the police and was not threatening with it. The cops did not wait long before emptying nine rounds into Powell, Then, after he was dead, they handcuffed him.
The holder of the device taking the video freaks, as does everyone who saw it. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. They killed that man. They could have tazed him. Now they cuffing him. He's dead. One cop still holding his gun on him, but he's dead. They cuffing him."
The area instantly is flooded with St. Louis cops, who are more intent on pushing the crowd back -- farther and farther-- as they keep making new and extended yellow crime tape barriers. To cover murdering cops' asses, they will pull out all the stops. To act like law-abiding humans themselves? No way.
We live in a national police state where cops have a blank check to murder anyone, any time for any reason -- and to have no consequences.
Since this is a before, during and after video of what happened, no cop spin can outrun the images.
This is a video that you must watch. Decide for yourself if the police were in fear for their lives and had no choice but to defend themselves by killing young Mr. Powell. It appears there were other ways to have detained this one fellow, who may have had a death wish.
I have one trivial aside to this story. In 1999 we traveled to St. Louis to see baseball, zoo, etc. We had a new conversion van, and we parked at a meter on the street. I put in the most amount of money it would accept at one time. We went to the Federal Reserve and took a tour.
When we came back to our van, a window had been smashed and tons of stuff had been stolen. Also, the St. Louis police had put a parking ticket on the van for having an expired meter!
When we called the police, we got the phone tree, it was like, "for murder, press one; for rape, press two, etc." It was hard to get to even speak with someone, but eventually we were told by the St. Louis police that they would not come out for something so insignificant as a car break-in. It had to be a murder, or someone fixing to get shot, more serious stuff to make an effort for a citizen, or a tourist.
Never mind that the St. Louis police had enough time and manpower to put a parking ticket on my car, and then have a collection agency harass me. The ticket maker may have even seen the crime, so far as I know. May have helped the crooks.
Two days later, as we were more than ready to leave that place, we drove back through that same area and the main street was chock full of cops. Traffic could hardly move for all of the heavy police presence. The reason? They were having an exhibit of specialty police vehicles, protecting their stuff.
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