Christian Taylor. Alive and well.
Officer Brad Miller of the Arlington, Texas, Police Department killed standout college student Christian Taylor, tried to cover it up, has been caught covering it up, and
was just fired.
Those are the facts.
What's wild, though, is he's still free—probably home watching The Price Is Right, while a beloved teenager is dead and gone. A younger brother lost his role model, a girlfriend lost her love, parents lost their pride and joy, teammates lost their inspirational leader, countless friends lost the most generous dude they knew.
At least three people/systems completely failed Taylor.
1. Officer Brad Miller, a 49-year-old trainee of the Arlington Police Department, clearly failed Taylor. It appears that Taylor, who was unarmed, needed some type of medical intervention, but instead was shot and killed by a man who was clearly intimidated by nothing more than Taylor's blackness.
2. The Arlington Police Department failed Christian Taylor, failed his family, and failed the nation on how this shooting was handled. Taylor's father said the police wouldn't even speak to him or take his calls. As most police departments do, agency officials then floated a fake story about the murder for days to protect their officer. This story did untold damage to Taylor's reputation and set the tone for how millions of people first saw the case.
3. The local and national media failed Christian Taylor, failed his family, and failed the nation by reporting, over and over and over again, that Officer Brad Miller shot and killed Christian Taylor during a fight between the two of them.
The local paper called it an altercation.
Countless outlets here, here, here, here, and here called it a struggle.
Now police admit Taylor was actually 7 to 10 feet away when shot by Officer Brad Miller and no struggle ever took place. At all.
This officer needs to be arrested. He did much more than violate policies, he killed a kid and tried to cover it up. Every single media outlet that parroted the lies of this officer needs to retract their story and make a statement apologizing.
