Outrage over killing of Ryan Gainer, shot three times on Saturday, as sheriff denounced for defending deputies’ use of lethal force
Archived version: https://archive.ph/50wkz
Outrage over killing of Ryan Gainer, shot three times on Saturday, as sheriff denounced for defending deputies’ use of lethal force
Archived version: https://archive.ph/50wkz
This is a tragic story and I’m against police brutality as much as anyone, but it feels a little sensationalist to word a news article title this way. “Holding a gardening tool” makes me picture someone who was just minding his own business and planting flowers, but a quick google search shows him trying to attack the officers with a garden hoe.
Shame on The Guardian for muddying the waters to try to farm clicks from a terrible situation.
Yet almost every other police force in the world would’ve handled this without shooting him…
Agreed. It’s a serious problem, but the discussion gets so muddied by websites with low integrity running headlines that are intentionally dishonest, just for clicks. They know they’ll get more outrage and $$ by wording it this way, and it’s gross behavior.
How many people across the web do you think saw this headline and assumed, like I did before looking into it, that this was another case of police mistaking some harmless object for a gun? Probably lots.
Glad to see TPM’s got reasonable takes :)
Thanks. It’s rare that I even comment on stuff that I know is going to be a divisive topic, because people get so worked up and it’s hard to have a human conversation.
It was a hula hoe - basically a stick. It was not the kind of hoe with a blade. They killed a kid that they knew was in a mental health crisis for running at them with a stick.
They could have tackled him. They could have tased him. They could have pepper sprayed him. They could have tried entering the home more gently and used de-escalation practices like most medical professionals use. If a patient in crisis picks up an IV pole and threatens hospital workers with it, their response is not to shoot the patient three times.
This is an American cop problem, period.