Being Armed While Black Can be a Deadly Offense

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

There has been another awful story in the press about a police shooting of a young black man. It happened a week ago last Friday afternoon in the Florida panhandle.

Roger Fortson was a twenty-three-year-old senior airman with the United States Air Force, and he was at home in his apartment in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, participating in a video chat with his girlfriend when someone knocked at his door. 

"Who is it?"  he asked.  

When there was no response, he walked to the door and stared through the peephole, but could see no one outside, so he went back to where he had been sitting and resumed the call.  Then there was a louder, more forceful knock.  At that point Airman Fortson picked up his legally-owned pistol and was walking back to the door when an officer with the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Department burst in.  The officer, seeing the young black man holding a pistol that was pointed downward toward the floor, immediately opened fire without issuing any warning and pumped four rounds into the airman's chest.  When the victim was on the floor and bleeding, the deputy said "Drop the gun."

Airman Fortson replied, "It's over there.  I don't have it."  The officer called for emergency medical services and the young shooting victim was taken to a local hospital where he died.

The police had been called to the apartment complex by another tenant who reported a couple fighting in one of the apartments.  When the responding officer arrived, she led him to the area where she had heard the commotion and gave the officer Fortson's apartment number.  There was no one else in the apartment at the time of the shooting, leading the Fortson family attorney, Ben Crump, to speculate that the woman mistakenly directed the officer to the wrong apartment.  

The officer involved in the shooting of Roger Fortson had his body camera on during the entire incident, and Airman Fortson's girlfriend also maintained her open video chat the shooting and the follow-up police search of the apartment.  The shooting is being investigated by the state of Florida, and there should be plenty of first-hand evidence from which to make a determination as to the cause of the young man's death.

Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black child, was shot and killed by a 26-year-old white Cleveland policeman in 2014 as he was carrying a displaying a toy gun.  The officer was later fired for failing to report that he had been released by a previous police employer for being "an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty,"  and his current employer had failed to adequately check the young policeman's background.

Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man was out for a drive with his girlfriend in St. Paul, Minnesota in July of 2016 when he was pulled over by the police during a routine check.  He told the police that he had a license to carry a gun and had one in his possession.  He was shot and killed by police as he was reaching for that license.  His girlfriend live-streamed in shooting on Facebook.

In March of 2020 police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, used a "no-knock"warrant as justification to break down the door of the apartment of Breonna Taylor, a black, 26-year-old emergency room technician.  The police were looking for evidence related to drug sales at another residence in which an ex-boyfriend of Ms. Taylor's and been involved.  She and her current boyfriend were in bed when the police used a battering ram to open the door, and the current boyfriend managed to reach his gun and fire one shot which hit a policeman in the thigh.  The police returned fire, and the young medical professional was killed.  It was later determined that police had lied as part of the justification for the warrant.

A 2020 study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that black people were more than three times as likely to be killed by police during an encounter than white people.

Senior Airman Roger Fortson never pointed his gun at the intruder and he would have probably been safer without it.  The NRA tells us that guns make us safer, but by "us," they only mean "some of us."

Being armed while black can be a deadly offense.