'Troubling on so many different levels,' says lawyer of unarmed man shot by police in Miami
Charles Kinsey was trying to diffuse a difficult situation. But the Miami-based behavioural therapist had no idea just how difficult things would get.
Kinsey was attending to a client of his who had run away from the group home where he works. He found him sitting in the middle of a street near the home, blocking traffic. The client is autistic, non-verbal and he was agitated at the time.
Eventually, the North Miami police arrived. As cell phone video shows, Kinsey followed the officers' orders and tried to persuade his distressed client to do the same. Then, for no apparent reason, police shot Kinsey in the leg.
Hilton Napoleon is Kinsey's lawyer. He spoke with As It Happens guest host Helen Mann about the video and how the shooting may affect Kinsey and his community's psyche. Here is part of their conversation.
Helen Mann: Mr. Napoleon, first of all how is Mr. Kinsey doing?
Hilton Napoleon: Mr. Kinsey is doing better physically. The hard part for Mr. Kinsey is the mental aspect of it because he felt like he did everything that he could in his power to cooperate with the police and also to help them with his patient.
HM: Do you have any idea why the police got involved?
HN: Someone called the police, a bystander I guess, because the autistic adult was sitting in the middle of the street. I know that when the police arrived they took out an AR-15 assault rifle and approached Mr. Kinsey and the adult autistic gentleman in a military style. Mr. Kinsey immediately threw his hands up and informed the officer that he was unarmed and [said] "Please don't shoot!" The officers told Mr. Kinsey to get on the ground, which Mr. Kinsey did immediately. He lay flat on his back and put his hands straight up in the air.
HN: The really sad part about this is that not only did he do everything that he was supposed to do, he was trying to encourage the autistic adult to also comply with the police. He told them, while he was laying flat on his back, he was a behavioural therapist, that this gentlemen has autism. But equally important, Mr. Kinsey informed the police that the instrument in his client's hands was a toy truck as you can clearly hear on the video. That's the part that's really shocking. Even though they received a call about a gun — you clearly could see it was a toy truck that this guy was playing with and you could clearly tell that he was autistic.
HM: And then, police shot Mr. Kinsey in the leg...
HN: Correct. And they handcuffed him after they shot him even though they found he was unarmed. They turned him on his side on the hot steaming pavement in Miami and they waited, and left him handcuffed, bleeding, until the ambulance arrived. They didn't try to assist him. They just left him there, which I feel is a very inhumane thing to do to someone you just shot, who is unarmed.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
By late afternoon on Thursday, a Miami Herald reporter indicated he had spoken with the police union — formally known as the Miami Fraternal Order of Police — about the shooting. Here's what the union told Chuck Rabin:
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