Sixty seconds. That seems to be an average amount of time that police officers give a situation before fatally shooting people of color. Philando Castile was shot 64 seconds from the time he and his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, were stopped by Jeronimo Yanez. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule—especially when it comes to children. Seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was shot about nine seconds from the time police surrounded the house she was in, attempting to do a raid to serve an arrest warrant. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot within two seconds of officers approaching him in the park in which he was playing with a pellet gun by himself. But the sixty second rule stood again last night as a police officer in Oklahoma City shot a deaf man—despite repeated cries from neighbors and family members that the man was hearing impaired.
The man, Madgiel Sanchez, was shot around 8:15 p.m. outside his home soon after the police responded there to investigate a hit-and-run accident. The first officer to arrive called for backup, pulled out his Taser and ordered Mr. Sanchez, 35, who was on his front porch, to drop the two-foot-long pipe he was clutching, the police said.
The officer’s commands did not register with Mr. Sanchez. He ambled off the porch toward the officer, waving the pipe in his right hand, according to the police and a witness. [...]
“Don’t kill him, he’s deaf,” his daughter yelled. “Don’t do it!”
About six other neighbors joined in, frantically trying to get the officer’s attention. But less than a minute after the episode began, a second officer arrived and immediately pulled out his handgun, [Mr. Rayos, a neighbor said]. While people continued to scream, the first officer fired his Taser at Mr. Sanchez, while the second fired his handgun, the police said.
Both the police and witnesses claim that Sanchez “ambled” toward officers. To amble means to walk at a slow or leisurely pace. This means that Sanchez wasn’t charging at the officers. Hell, he wasn’t even walking briskly toward them. Surely, two officers—one equipped with a taser, the other with a gun, could have come up with some other alternative to fatally shooting this man. Especially as seven people are shouting at you that the man cannot hear. But remember, sixty seconds—that’s all cops seem to need when it comes to taking the lives of people of color. Multiple shots fired and a man dead, all in response to a hit-and-run call.
In the neighborhood, Shields-Davis, just south of downtown Oklahoma City, Mr. Sanchez was known for wandering up and down the streets during the day, even in heavy rain, and running laps in the parking lot of an American Legion post next to his home. He never left home without the pipe, wielding it shoo away stray dogs, Mr. Rayos said.
Mr. Sanchez also used the pipe to communicate with people, moving it around to try to convey what he meant, Mr. Rayos said. It was the same motion Mr. Sanchez made before the police shot him, Mr. Rayos said.
Inevitably, someone out there will say that this is not about race. That police have a difficult job to do and they have to assess a situation quickly, within seconds, and make tough calls. But, facts are what they are. Black men are 2.8 times as likely to be killed than white people during encounters with police. Hispanic men are 1.7 times more likely to be killed. Black women and girls make up 33 percent of fatal police shootings of women despite only being 13 percent of the female population. The data on Hispanic women who are killed by police is lacking. And of course, because Hispanic is an ethnicity and not a race—this is complicated by the fact that people can be both black and Hispanic. Sure, white people get killed by police. That could be one argument to suggest police aren’t always killing people of color because of bias. But we know that while about half of the percentage of people killed by police are white, they are also not killed in numbers disproportionate to their representation in the population the way people of color are.
The fact that Sanchez was deaf adds yet another layer. Police are woefully unprepared to deal with people in the community with disabilities. So that’s people of color, people with disabilities, the elderly … who else should we add to the list? It’s time to do something about policing—and fast. This trigger-happy behavior is out of control and a sixty second average before taking lives should be unacceptable.