El Cajon, Calif, Sept 29: Protesters yelled “murder” and demanded a federal investigation into the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Southern California, just as racially charged anger over two similar incidents during the past two weeks had begun to subside. Tuesday’s shooting unfolded as two officers responding to several calls for help in dealing with a mentally unstable person confronted the man walking in traffic in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, according to local police. One policeman opened fire with his service pistol and his partner simultaneously fired a Taser stun gun when the man pulled an object from his pants pocket and took aim at them in a “shooting stance,” according to police. No weapon from the man, however, was recovered from the scene, police said. The object he was said to be carrying was not specified. Police did not immediately identify the victim, but local activists and friends named him as Ugandan-born Alfred Olango. They said he was mentally ill and that he may have been suffering a seizure in the moments before his death. Federal court records show that Olango, 38, fled to the United States from Uganda with his family in 1991 because the east African country’s then-president, for whom Olango’s father worked, had threatened to kill them. According to court documents from 2006, he had been granted permanent US residency but lost that status in 2001 after he was convicted of selling cocaine. As of 2006, records showed, a deportation order against him was still pending. One of two officers involved in Tuesday’s confrontation, the policeman who fired his Taser, had received special training in working with San Diego County’s Psychiatric Emergency Response Team, or PERT, El Cajon police said. The officers, who were not publicly identified, were placed on administrative leave. Days earlier, two black men were killed by police under questionable circumstances in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, igniting demonstrations against racial bias in US policing and demanding greater accountability for law enforcement officers. The shooting in Charlotte sparked a week of sometimes violent protests, prompting authorities there to impose a state of emergency and curfew. At a news conference yesterday, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis appealed for calm. “I implore the community to be patient with us, work with us, look at the facts at hand before making any judgment,” he said.
CRIES FOR ‘JUSTICE’
In El Cajon, a predominantly white city of about 100,000 residents with a significant community of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, civil rights activists and as many as 300 protesters gathered outside the police department, where they chanted “murder,” “justice for Alfred Olango” and “black lives matter.” Some of the protesters broke off and marched toward the scene of the shooting, joined by more demonstrators, as the swelling crowd stopped at times to block traffic. “We are not going to stop until we get justice,” the Reverend Shane Harris, president of the National Action Network’s San Diego chapter, said at the demonstration. “We do not trust local prosecutors to investigate local police.” “Mr. Olango was killed for three strikes against him. The first strike, being black. The second strike, being mentally ill. The third strike, not following orders,” Christopher Rice-Wilson, a community activist, said. Police acknowledged that emergency dispatchers had received three calls about a man suffering from mental distress before dispatching two patrol officers, who encountered the man, pacing back and forth behind a restaurant, at mid-afternoon on Tuesday. The man disregarded officers’ commands to show both his hands as they tried talking with him before he was shot. Police said they obtained cellphone video that a bystander had taken of the shooting. But authorities released only a still frame from the footage that shows two officers pointing weapons at a man who was aiming an object at them. In a separate video clip taken moments after the shooting and posted on social media, a woman who refers to herself as the victim’s sister is heard crying in anguish. “Oh my God. You killed my brother. I just called for help and … you killed him,” the unidentified woman says, sobbing. The San Diego District Attorney was investigating the shooting, and police spokesman Lieutenant Rob Ransweiler said the video filmed by the bystander could be released once that investigation is completed. (AGENCIES)
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