MAIN STREAM NEWS VERSION OF THE STORY
THE ENDING OF KORRYN GAINE'S LIVE
After the officers gave Gaines a citation for [missing license plates, insurance, and failure to get an emissions check she defiantly threw the paperwork out of the window. When she was told the car would be towed, she placed one of her children on her lap as a barrier between police and herself.
"The cops then cuffed her from behind and dragged her out of the vehicle kicking and screaming."
Five months later, Gaines didn't show up for her court date, cops broke into her home, found Gaines had a weapon and wound up shooting her and her child after an hours long stand off
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/korryn-gaines-wanted-failing-court-article-1.2736844
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-korryn-gaines-police-shooting-20160802-story.html
Korryn Gaines's death and more importantly, the shooting of her child, have more to do with police behavior than Korryn's behavior. So let's examine some police behavior in the past and move to the present.
Some of those on the east coast and points beyond may not know it, but California police used to be famous for their daily car chases. Some of the car chases scenes from Jason Bourne movies might have been inspired by some of them. After there was a flipped over car here and a mowed down pedestrian there, lost law suits, etc., the police slowed down a bit in their pursuit of justice.
Yes, I may be exaggerating a little, but not by much. For whatever reason, the police in California don’t chase criminals in as fast a fashion as they used to.
There are still chase scenes involving California Police. However they're slower now. The police now leave enough space between themselves and the criminal in the car ahead so that the criminal, who stole a DVD player, does not feel compelled to get up to 100mph in a school zone.
In other words, the police slow down and wait for the criminal to wind down
So that's left a new dynamic between cops in cars and criminals in cars. Now the criminal will just slow drive during "the chase," refusing to stop for miles on end. This means that some car chases can go on for hours and cover multiple counties. This tends to make the authoritative personality on Fox News angry. Me? I’m glad the police are not going to goad a criminal moron into t-boning me while I’m on my way home from work. I don’t care how long it takes.
However, now the criminal is sort of in charge of when the chase will end. The criminal in car can sit in his car, taking his time to accept that he is definitely going to jail for a long time. The criminal can put off beginning his life behind bars, and he can put it off until the tank of his car runs dry. The police have to suck it up, put down their pride, and wait until this happens
In 2005, when a man held 19 month old Susie Pena up between himself and police as he ran. And I've always wondered if he thought he had a similar type of control over the cops? I always wondered if he thought, 'The police won’t dare shoot me if I hold the baby in front of me.'
But he was wrong. The police didn't wait long at all. The police shot him and his child to death.
Before I saw photos and videos of the moments surrounding Susie Pena's death at the hands of police, I couldn’t imagine the police making the choice to kill a toddler to get to a criminal father. I thought there was no choice but to keep him cornered and wait until he gave it up. I thought they would have to wait for so long as he held the baby in front of him.
Now I know different.
Despite reading all the fluff offered in the newspaper in 2005 as to the reasons the police couldn’t slow down and wait on this criminal until he got tired, despite all I've read about him being "too dangerous to the rest of the public" for police to take their time with this criminal father, I cannot make myself believe shooting him while he held that baby was the only option.
I can't even believe the police made themselves believe waiting, following him slowly was not an option. The police could have kept the areas he was moving into clear until they could re-corner him.
And if Susie Pena had looked like this
 |
| Jon Benet Ramsey - White America's child victim |
instead of this
 |
| The real Susie Pena, a little Latina princess |
Susie Pena would still be alive and junior high school about now.
If Susie had been white, I'm guessing 8 out of the 11 cops that fired 60 bullets (at least) at Susie wouldn't have fired their guns at all; two of officers involved would instead be in the ground in a cemetery somewhere, having sacrificed their lives for her. And, the public would still feel tears coming to their eyes whenever they thought about what heroes the two dead cops were.
Susie would still be here if she were white.
Sometimes I think maybe I'm making this up in my own head based on what I learned as a kid about what hero cops are really supposed to do.
I swear, I've probably clocked 10,000 hours worth of cop show watching over the years, 80% of them before I was 15. In decades past, there was a cop show on the major networks every night of the week, sometimes twice a night. And I promise you, there was never a scenario where the good guys, the cops, shot children or even fired guns in the direction of children.
In the all white cop shows of yesteryear, rather than shoot at a child, six white cops would have gotten shot and one of those heroic white boys would have died an agonizing death, a white cop buddy holding his hand as his world faded to black.
And this is exactly what I expect of cops now.
My take on this may seem a bit unreasonable at first glance, being it IS based on fiction. However, television fiction is supposed to be based on reality and/or our ideals. And it is my understanding that when it's a choice between the cop or the honest citizen when somebody has to die in order to protect the peace, it's supposed to be the cop goes down.
The police officers were called specifically to save Susie Pena. And they killed her instead of the criminal killing her.
Korryn Gaines probably didn't know about Susie Pena, as her story was shut down rather quickly, even locally. But Gaines must have known that Tamir Rice was shot down by police. If she paid attention to #SayHerName in addition to #BlackLivesMatter, she knew Tarika Wilson's child was shot by police too.
But Gaines behaved as if she thought white cops don't shoot black children.
The police have tried to pretend that Gaines was holding the child "hostage," and/or the police are trying to confuse the public by using the word "hostage" in a technical sense. But it's clear to me that Gaines was cradling that child, holding that child to her while she held a gun in order to keep the police from taking her to jail.
According to some of the articles I've read she used the child as a shield during the traffic stop. And in listening to the video, that's what it sounded like to me too.
But Korryn Gaines's behavior in the end, isn't the issue here. Korryn Gaines began to die in a shoot out with police the day they put "resisting arrest" on her record five months before she actually died.
That is, Korryn Gaines being shot to death has to do with why the police went to her place at all, which is based on the reason they towed her car -- this is what set her off, towing her car, not the tickets. And her upset at have her car "stolen" by police created a reason for them charge her for resisting arrest.
The first thing that came to my mind when I heard about her car being towed is the fact I have never had my car towed despite having had some or all of the same problems Korryn had when I was broke in my twenties:
- -- Expired plates because I couldn't afford to pay but had to go to work in order get the money to pay. Wound up paying double because registration was late AND then had to pay the ticket too-- which also increases as it is late.
- -- I claimed I was a student when I mostly wasn't for more than a year. I was unable to pay the $300 emissions fee (which California refunded years later because it was a straight state orchestrated rip off)
- -- Having insurance lapse for a few days because my one of my two "extra checks" per year didn't come until a few days after the insurance was due.
I used to keep my head down and hope to go unnoticed rather than put a sign on my car. But when I was unlucky and they stopped me I had a good excuse (being a student) or told the truth (can't afford it). I was extremely blessed and/or lucky that they didn't tow my car but I also knew the rules of the game. I knew that police have the ability to make subjective decisions about whose car they will tow and that my being black is always a pre-made mark against me.
Philando appears to have known the rules of the game too. He got shot anyway because he happened to be stopped by the racist coward of century.
Gaines's behavior is the mark of someone who is emotionally/mentally unbalanced in some way --which doesn't mean she wasn't well read, which doesn't mean she was stupid, which doesn't mean she was not right about her rights. But her behavior during the March arrest lends credence to the claims that she was "developmentally disabled" as a result of lead poisoning.
To me this means, the police should have gone to the arrest her with her mental and emotional instability in mind.
Instead they probably went to forcibly arrest the irrational "angry black woman," not thinking of her child once, because all they wrote down in their reports about the March arrest were probably things that affect COP SAFETY, "the resisting arrest" charge.
It really shouldn't have been ridiculous for Gaines to assume that she wouldn't be shot because her child was there. This is a reprehensible decision for somebody mentally and emotionally sound to make but a the same time it's not an unreasonable assumption...if you're white.
But we should all know by now that America is getting closer to being AmeriKKKa everyday, if it isn't already. And we should all know that:
A) the women and children that cops refused to shoot on television cop shows were 96% white.
B) In real life, cops shoot to kill black and brown children and/or care a lot less when they fire their weapons when black and brown children are nearby.
- In Aiyana Stanley Jones’s case, the police claim to have not seen her or the bullets were flying. But they should have known the child was in the home before they went in or waited for their target to come out. But it appears the police didn't care one way or the other so they didn't wait
And if Pena was moving into a populated area and the police decided they could not wait, if police had to stop him immediately using their guns, then why were 11 officers firing multiple rounds at ONE MAN WITH BABY using ONE GUN instead of one or two officers shooting? That would have increased Susie's chances of survival greatly.
- In Susie Pena's case, as described above, the police flat shot that child. Police made the decision to shoot her father while her was holding her in front of him.
- In Tarika Wilson's case, the cops went in guns blazing almost as soon as they opened the door. Because they didn't care one way or the other who they killed.
- In Tamir Rice's case the cop claimed to have mistaken the child for an adult -- when we all saw the cop jump out of that car with no fear and no apparent thoughts of self-preserevation at all. It's clear didn't care Tamir Rice's life way or the other
It amazes me that white people can willfully unsee that this callous disregard for black life sans the foaming at the mouth hate is the most prevalent kind of racism. I hate saying that day-to-day ethnoracism is based on "implicit bias" because when ethnoracism rises to the level of murderous disregard it feels so much bigger than "bias."
And the word "bias" always seems to be implied to be part of something "natural" when social scientists start debating about how to address it when
there is nothing "natural"
about a police officer being callous enough
to disregard the lives of black and brown children
who don't look like his children
instead of being compassionate enough
to lay his own life down for them
as a police officer.
Something in these shootings are willful and joyful and satisfying for mostly white and mostly male, police officers and their defenders. I know there is. There has to be. You don't keep doing the same heinous things over and over and over again unless you're getting something out of it. You don't defend the same heinous things over and over again, pretending you see no pattern, unless you're getting something out of it.
I guess there is the satisfaction of feeling superior out of letting your "natural" implicit bias fly free. But even that seems too small an idea to use to justify the number of black and brown people that police have killed, children too, in situations where they definitely wouldn't have killed white people or white children.
A DAILY NEWS HEADLINE
"Korryn Gaines,
mom killed by
Baltimore police in standoff,
was wanted after telling cop
‘you will have to murder me’
during traffic stop
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/korryn-gaines-wanted-failing-court-article-1.2736844Some black people think Gaines's March arrest is a legitimate act of defiance. I don't. I was raised on military bases in a military family. So, I just can't. Frankly, I think the people that have said this was a legitimate act of defiance are some low-expectation-having so-and-so-s. It seems clear to me that Gaine's statements did not come from an emotionally stable place even though all of us are legitimately angry at all white police officers.
Even so, I know Lindsay Lohan would have kept her car if she was sober and later survived the gun encounter with cops at her home even if she'd never been in a movie, was dirt poor, was dumb as post, high strung, just plain high, and waving a machete like Charlie Sheen.
But Korryn's behavior is not the central issue because the police shouldn't have have broken into her home at all -- not over car issues, not with her child there. And they wouldn't have if mother and child had been white.
Korryn was reportedly developmentally disabled. Some don't believe it. But I do based on my very subjective experience of undiagnosed others I've known in the past and what she said in her videos.
Her being developmentally disabled doesn't mean she wasn't "right" about some of her rights. But, the decision to hold off police with a gun while her child was in the home shows me that things were not well with her, mentally or emotionally. And I can't think of a reason why she should have been well mentally and emotionally with what she'd been through -- even if she wasn't developmentally disabled.
Only believers in "Strong Black Woman" could assume Gaines should have been able to
- take a bit of a beating while being arrested in March
- lose the baby she was carrying,
- have her boyfriend beat her bad enough to call the cops when she was clearly terrified of them. ("You'll have to murder me" is an expression of terror more than any thing else)
But I don't.
Deciding to get into a shoot out with police with your child in the room is a sign of some sort of mental or emotional disability OR extreme stupidity and selfishness. And it does not seem to me like this woman stupid and selfish.
But Korryn's behavior is not the central issue because the police shouldn't have have broken into her home at all -- not over car issues, not with her child there. And they wouldn't have if mother and child had been white.
The officers waited and waited before they went in to get Korryn Gaines. There was an hours long stand off. Yet, I still can’t get it out of my mind, that cops would have waited multiple days if a white child have been involved.
In 1993, ATF and whole host of federal and local police waited for that WACO cult for a couple of months before they went in. Over and over again the press said they were trying to wait out David Koresh and the gang because white children were in the compound. They wound up killing some of those children in what some have called a botched effort to end the stand off. But the law enforcement did wait for 1.5 to 2 months before they went in guns blazing.
Korryn Gaines got a few hours. This time the police couldn't wait but x hours for an unstable woman cradling her child and a gun to calm down. Police decided they had to go in and start a shoot out with a baby in the room -- over an arrest that started out being about license plates and car insurance.
As wild as she got during the actual March arrest, reportedly kicking and screaming, the police should have waited until this small woman was separate from her child to even try to approach her. If police believe she used her child as a shield during the March arrest too, that she pulled her child on her lap to stop police from removing her from her car, then that's another reason police shouldn't have arrested her in her home while the child was there.
So I’m still reading about Korryn Gaines. I found out she tried took off work to get the required paperwork for her court case but couldn't get it from police immediately. (Apparently she wasn't THAT developmentally disabled)
While she appears relatively calm, she shows an inability to emotionally deal with bureaucracy even when it gets more than a little stupid. Still, her effort to get the paperwork shows that Gaines wasn't just flouting the law for the heck of it as she was originally portrayed.
This story has changed a lot since I first heard it.
1) Police via the press made it sound like Korryn Gaines was wild all the way through the arrest. She wasn't cooperative, not at all. But she wasn't screaming and insane either
2) Police via the press made it sound like she was screaming and insane through the March arrest then just chose not to show up for her court appearance -- when she went to the police station to get the required paperwork for her court date.
3) Police via the press told us Gaines was holding her child "hostage," using the word in a technical sense(?) to justify their shooting their way into the room while she was cradling her child AFTER some officers had already experienced her using the child as a shield, as a way to stop them from taking her to jail
...just like felons in Los Angeles's slow car chases do.
It's becoming pretty clear that the police almost have to be lying about on number of points.
If we had police body cam video, I seriously doubt we would have seen a thing that would have think the police did everything they could to avoid shooting Gaine's child. Waiting longer was the more obvious choice but it is also the more galling choice for police. They hate having the criminal being in charge of when a stand-off ends.
Deciding to arrest her boyfriend at the very same time, for a complaint Gaines issued herself during a domestic abuse incident almost had to be done for entertainment value.
If Gaines's boyfriend had taken the children out for ice cream or something, and Gaines had been alone, police might not have had any choice but to rush her -- after they waited a day. Gaines might still be dead. But it's getting clearer and clearer to me that police shouldn't have been there in the first place. And if they'd done their jobs the same way they'd have done it if Korryn and her child had been white, police probably would have made sure there was video in existance to prove it.
Even if it turns out
Gaines was pushed
into accidentally shooting her own child,
by police rushing her the way they did,
just like crowding an idiot criminal
in a car on a Los Angeles Highway,
all this means is that
the relatively more intelligent
police officer is mostly at fault
for rushing her
The larger responsibility being with police instead of the criminal is what Los Angeles Highway Patrol finally figured out about chasing criminals on the freeways like they were on the Indianapolis 500
Therefore, I still can’t figure out why cops can get a foaming at the mouth, white mass shooter with multiple guns capable of rapid fire into custody without so much as a bruise while police cannot, will not simply out-wait a mentally unstable black woman
1) with a child,
2) inside her home
3) a present and immediate threat to nobody so long as they don’t enter her home.
For so long as Korryn had her child with her, they should have waited. And if they were concerned Korryn would turn the gun on her own child and make it "hostage situation" instead of "sheild situation", the police should have left Korryn's facebook feed on so they could see her. And if the police were concerned that facebook commenters were telling Korryn to stay the course and battle it out with police, then have facebook turn the comments off, not the video because the police, especially the Baltimore Police, have a credibility rating of just about zero.
We agree with Korryn Gaines in that WE THE PEOPLE need to be able to watch you at all times.
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