Nowadays, weapons need exist only in the mind of the policeman in firing position.” - Les Payne, Journalist for Newsday1 “In the old days, the cops simply shot their black victims and a weapon the officers carried for such emergencies. According to Lee’s findings, the words “I thought he had a gun” coming from a law enforcement officer is enough to justify most killings of unarmed people of color by police. Law enforcement in the United States have a much higher rate of shooting unarmed people of color, especially Black men, while falsely assuming they’re armed. Cynthia Lee of the George Washington University Law School wrote a report about the intersection of race, police use of force, and false assumptions about seeing guns that don’t exist. The department relied on the false assumption of a gun in order to justify why this shooting occurred.
Frederick Holder's blood is still visible on the lighter. Here is the image of the butane lighter that LASD claims they mistakingly thought was a handgun. There is only an obstructed wide shot from a dash camera, which has no audio. None of the deputies were wearing body cameras, even though the department already had access to body cameras, so many of the deputy claims about this incident cannot be verified. There is not even a “barrel” that stretches beyond the lighter trigger. Critics of this shooting say that the lighter is too small to have been mistaken for a gun by anyone trained in firearms. Holder was unarmed, and the item in question turned out to be an L-shaped butane lighter. That is when they opened fire on Holder, who was pronounced dead on the scene by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. But it turned out that there was no gun on the scene. The van stopped, and deputies allege that the man was holding an object that they perceived to be a gun.
Deputies responded and pursued the vehicle to conduct a traffic stop.
According to a news release from the department: deputies from the Norwalk sheriff’s station were notified by a Los Angeles Police Department airship that a white utility box van (which was reported stolen) was driving erratically.
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