1/22/2015

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Down a Fistful of Ketamine with a Six-Pack of Flying Fish


Those arms sticking out of that car belong to Leroy Tutt, who had been pulled over on December 30, 2014, for a traffic stop by two police officers in Bridgeton, New Jersey. That's Officer Roger Worley whose gun seems to be going off.

He wasn't shooting at Tutt, though. He was shooting at Jerame Reid, a passenger in the car who, at that moment, was being shot by Officer Braheme Days. It's hard to see, but Reid had just told Days, who kept screaming at him to not reach for anything, not even a phone, or he'll be "fucking dead," that he was "getting out and getting on the ground."


Again, it's a bit blurry, but Reid was unarmed and was putting his hands up as Days opened fire, followed by Worley shooting, too. They killed Reid. Days had previously arrested Reid for drug possession last year, and Reid served a 13-year sentence for shooting at a state trooper when he was a teenager. So Days was more than likely keyed up and ready for a violent confrontation. Days does say that he found a gun in the glove compartment.

The lawyer for Reid's family has requested that the Cumberland County prosecutor's office recuse itself from the investigation and to give it over to the state attorney general's office or another entity. Considering the outcomes of probes in Ferguson and Staten Island, it's a logical request. Of course, that doesn't guarantee that anything will happen.

Meanwhile, the Bridgeton Police Department is upset that the dashboard cam tape has been released. It released a statement calling it, in an unintentionally ironic way, "unprofessional and uncompassionate" to the family.

On its own, you could make a case that Reid shouldn't have gotten out of the car - although what he could have done to calm down Days, who was kind of hysterical the entire time, is questionable. But in the context of the last year or so of high-profile shootings of unarmed black men, it's finally just more of a disgusting pattern of police paranoia combined with a disregard for certain human, yes, lives.