The first one was Husien Shehada, which took place on June 14th. The second was Lawrence McCoy Jr., which took place three days later.
The grainy video from an outdoor security camera shows Husien Shehada walking through South Beach just after 4 a.m., then stopping and putting his hands in the air. His brother, Samer Shehada, steps beside him — then three gunshots from a police officer off-screen throw Husien Shehada to the sidewalk. “His eyes were still open,” said Samer Shehada, 31. “And when they say you can see the life leaving someone’s eyes, I could see that.”
Four days later, the same officer who shot Husien Shehada, 29 — Adam Tavss, a Miami Beach patrolman who had been on the force for three years — was involved in a second shooting. Calls to 911 suggested that each man was armed, but neither appeared to have a weapon when shot. Both later died.
The Miami Beach Police Department and the state attorney’s office are investigating the shootings. But since the first shooting on June 14, the police and lawyers representing the victims’ families have been battling for sympathy with leaks, exaggerations and omissions, and the public struggles with who to blame, who is covering up — and how much to care.
I find it hard to believe these shootings would be met with apathy. Has Miami become so savage that anything less than a major shooting in which several people are killed and wounded gets ignored?
The first incident was covered by video surveillance as well as eye-witnesses. It turned out the victim had a coat hanger under his shirt, which could have been mistaken for a weapon, not the ridiculous claim that he had an AK under his shirt, but some kind of weapon that patrolman Tavss mistook for a gun. Still, I'd say that threat was met with excessive force.
In the second shooting, the men were running away. This is unacceptable police brutality at its worst.
What's your opinion? Do you think the police should be given a break due to the incredible pressure they're under putting their lives on the line every day? Or do you think they should be held to an even higher standard as far as gun-play goes?
Has Miami become jaded to all the violence? Don't these kinds of incidents in other cities generate a mass outcry and demonstrations? What's going on down there?
Please feel free to leave a comment.
