A Teen With A Toy Was Killed By Police, And Few Want To Talk About It - non tweet version
A Teen With A Toy Was Killed By Police, And Few Want To Talk About It
https://defector.com/a-teen-with-a-toy-was-killed-by-police-and-few-want-to-talk-about-it/
Dave McKenna
10:38 AM EDT on Sep 29, 2021
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)
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At a press conference held hours after the shooting, the Maryland State Police said that one of their officers had responded to a pair of 911 calls about a male acting “suspicious” on Hollywood Road just down the street from the state police barracks. The officer started shooting at Ham because the kid pointed what looked like a real weapon at him, the cops said, and kept shooting after the teen fell because, according to the officer’s account, the mortally wounded youngster was attempting to pull out a knife. Woodrow Jones, State Police superintendent, told reporters that his agency did not know how many shots were fired or how many shots hit Ham.
Almost immediately after the shooting, state police released a photograph of what the cops said was the knife found on Ham, which had a three-inch blade. The cops also said Ham was otherwise unarmed, and that the officer had mistaken a faux firearm as the real thing. The police only released a stock photo of an airsoft pellet gun they said he pointed at the officer in a menacing manner. (That’s the same non-lethal replica that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was playing with when he was murdered by Cleveland police in 2014.) It took almost two weeks, and pressure from Ham’s family and other Leonardtown residents, before the state police released the name of the officer, Joseph Azzari. The cops, however, have still never said how many times Azzari, described by superiors as a two-year veteran, fired his weapon or how many bullets hit Ham.
Police and public officials have released almost no information about the shooting since the day Ham died, and have done seemingly nothing to resolve the questions hanging over the case. They have never said who made the 911 calls that triggered the deadly encounter or released the recordings. No video footage of Ham’s shooting has ever come out; Maryland State Police are not currently required to wear cameras. A week before Ham was killed, state legislators in Annapolis passed a bill, the Maryland Police Accountability Act of 2021, which an omnibus bill that among other things mandates that all state police officers be equipped with body cams by 2023.
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(The County times got got the tape from the shooting)
At 1:26:35 p.m. on April 13 the trooper begins firing his service weapon, a Glock 22 .40 caliber pistol, which has a magazine capacity of 15 rounds.
At 1:26:39 p.m., the firing has stopped briefly after 10 shots; those shots were fired in five seconds.
At 1:26:42 p.m., the recording shows the trooper fired shot number 11 three seconds after the initial salvo. Evidence markers from the scene indicated the officer moved about nine to 12 feet closer to Ham before firing shot number 11.
At 1:27:30 p.m., emergency sirens can be heard, 48 seconds after the 11th shot was fired.
At 1:27:39 p.m., the officer opens fire again, firing four additional shots at close range, 57 seconds after shot number 11. The gunfire ended at 1:27:42 p.m.
That’s 15 bullets in three volleys over one minute and seven seconds. Again, neither the police nor prosecutors have yet said how many shots hit Ham. In August, Richard Fritz, state’s attorney for St. Mary’s County, told the County Times that his office couldn’t complete its investigation because the state had yet to finish an autopsy on Ham. The teen was killed in April.
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The rest of this story is filled with unbelievable details.
If someone had shot me 11 time in less than a minute after meeting me and without any conversation at all, I might be pulling a pitiful 3" blade on him if I had any strength as my life was ebbing from me.
We need to redesign policing in this country. A good start would be to immediately demilitarize the cops. Every time I see a a four or five star police chief it just tells me everything I need to know to start job searching for a replacement chief. No more jump boots, no more SS-y black uniforms and braidery, medals and insignia.
Unit cohesion, my ass, the SS and Gestapo was real proud of their unit cohesion, too.
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