http://crooksandliars.com/2015/07/cops-shoot-many-many-native-americans
Not only do Native Americans get killed at an astounding rate, many of them live in extreme poverty conditions. Despite so much official indifference, they dependably turn out the vote for Democrats. Maybe it's time we started helping our indigenous people! Via Mother Jones:
Nearly 100 people demonstrated in downtown Denver earlier this week after police there shot and killed 35-year-old Paul Castaway on July 12. Police said the man was coming towards an officer with a knife, but his family and witnesses on the scene dispute those claims and say he was pointing the knife toward himself.
According to his mother, Castaway struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism. Witnesses say he was holding a knife to his own throat and didn't threaten officers, according to the Denver Post. Castaway was shot four times and died later that night. Denver Police Department spokesman, Sonny Jackson, told the Post that the department is reviewing the incident, and that the officers involved will be named soon.
Castaway was a Lakota Sioux. His death brings up a rarely-discussed aspect of the ongoing conversation around police brutality in the United States: Native Americans are more likely than most other racial groups to be killed by police. Indian Country Today noted that according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit organization that studies incarceration and criminal justice issues, police kill Native Americans at a higher rate than any other ethnic group.
in Mr. Castaways case as others with mental struggles i can't believe i'm about to say this but it's true, we can't expect cops good or bad to know the mental state of someone in a minute or two thereby making split decisions can cause irreparable as well as positive outcomes. that's a lot to put on someones shoulders i think training helps but when face with a presumably you or them situation that training can go out the window in a heartbeat.
i also believe a lot of these excuses by police to murder are contrived and convenient especially after finding out the victim was mentally challenged they are just handy when a quick fix to a quicker screw up is needed. point is we don't hear about Native Americans one might say the region is not so much that it gets national coverage
but neither is a Black guy dying in Baltimore to Los Angeles but they see it and read about it. is it more that the Native Americans aren't considered newsworthy????? but if they make millions on their casinos all of America knows makes you go hmmmmmmm is finance more important than lives and do all lives really matter in America?????
