Patrick Harmon, a Black Utah cyclist who was pulled over by police for not using a light on his bike at night, was shot and killed on Aug. 13. Bodycam footage revealed that Harmon was fleeing the scene and gunned down, and the Salt Lake City District Attorney did not find the officer at fault which has civil rights groups and others in an uproar.
The Guardian reports:
Police in Utah fatally shot a man from behind while he was running away from officers, according to newly released footage, which has sparked accusations of racial profiling and a “brutal execution”.
Prosecutors in Salt Lake City have said officers were justified in killing Patrick Harmon, 50, who was pulled over for riding a bicycle without a light and who attempted to flee when police tried to arrest him. Police are not facing charges despite the fact that the body-camera footage captured officer Clinton Fox shouting “I’ll f*cking shoot you!” from a distance before he fired three bullets into Harmon, who was running in the opposite direction.
“They just murdered him flat out,” Alisha Shaw, Harmon’s niece, told the Guardian on Thursday after watching the footage. “They are lying. There is no way they were threatened by anything. He was only trying to get away.”
Our question is, what danger did Harmon present in riding a bicycle at night other than to himself? And if a man is feeling on a bike, why give chase instead of going to the instinct of gunning him down? Further, why shoot the man and then handcuff him as if he wasn’t dying on the spot? . And on cue, Harmon’s past and the fact he had a knife on his person is being dissected but that was allegedly discovered after the fact.
All of it seems suspect as it sounds
The footage can be seen below and we must warn that the images within are disturbing.
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Photo: screen cap/The Guardian
