police can kill you in your own backyard & claim they mistook your phone for a gun

22-year-old black man Stephon Clark was standing in his backyard in Sacramento, holding a cell phone when police fired 20 shots into his body. Responding to a report that someone in the neighborhood was breaking car windows, Deputies in a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department helicopter saw Clark, living at his own home, and told deputies on the ground that Clark had shattered a window with a toolbar before instructing them to his location. Once on scene (aka Clark’s home which he shared with his grandparents and siblings) police approached Clark who they believed was armed with a gun and shot at him 20 times. What they mistook for a gun was actually a cell phone.

Because even if Clark did have a gun, gun ownership in the home is only for white people. Because even if the police had encountered the right suspect, shooting someone 20 times is a justified response to vandalism.

“The officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them. Fearing for their safety, the officers fired their duty weapons striking the suspect multiple times,” the police department said in a release.