Kinsey’s shooting comes after a pair of officer-involved shootings led to the deaths of two men,Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, kicking off a period of national unrest and putting the spotlight again on police use of force, particularly against black men. Kinsey also is black.
Protesters flooded the North Miami Police Department headquarters on Thursday, demanding answers for the shooting.
Eight law enforcement officers have since been killed in separate incidents in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, targeted by gunmen who claimed they were reacting in part to incidents such as those that led to the deaths of Sterling and Castile.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting.
“Bringing in an outside agency assures our commitment to transparency and objectivity in a very sensitive matter,” Eugene said.
Prosecutors said they’ll decide whether the officer should be charged after the state agency completes its investigation.
“They will provide us with their factual findings and conclusions,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said. “At that time, we will conduct our own investigation and review all of the evidence to determine whether the actions of the shooting officer constitute a criminal act that can be proven beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt.”
‘Why did you shoot me?’
Kinsey told WSVN he was stunned by the shooting, like when a mosquito bites unexpectedly.
“When he hit me, I’m like, I still got my hands in the air,” he said.
“I’m like, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ ” Kinsey said he asked the officer.
“He said to me, ‘I don’t know.'”
North Miami police have said officers had “attempted to negotiate with the two men on the scene.”
At some point, one of the officers discharged his weapon, police said. In a fact sheet released via social media, the police department said the officer involved in the shooting is a 30-year-old Hispanic male with four years on the job.
“I realize there may be questions about what happened on Monday night. You have questions. The community has questions. … I, personally, have questions. I assure you, we’ll get all the answers,” the police chief told reporters Thursday.
‘This is not supposed to be happening in North Miami’
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, condemned the shooting: “Thankfully, Mr. Kinsey is alive and not more gravely injured — but had the officer’s weapon been pointed just a few degrees differently, this senseless incident could have been a much greater tragedy.”
Simon called on law enforcement agencies to examine policies on the use of force and responses to people with mental health issues.
“Without changes in policy and improved training of officers, we will very likely see more needless shootings and deaths at the hands of police,” he said in a statement.
A U.S. congresswoman whose district includes North Miami told reporters she was shocked by the video that shows the scene before the shooting.
“This is like a nightmare to me,” Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson said.
“When you shoot a man lying on the ground with his hands up, explaining to you the situation, and you shoot him anyway? Something’s not right with this picture,” she said.
The shooting she said, isn’t typical of the city, which she described as a “melting pot.”
“This is not supposed to be happening in North Miami. North Miami is a city where the police officers and the community gel,” she said. “So many of our police officers come from the community (and) live in the community.”
‘He did everything he could possibly do’
A hospital spokeswoman said Kinsey is in good condition. His attorney called off a press conference with Kinsey on Thursday morning, saying his client was traumatized and speaking with a psychiatrist.
“The reality is that he believed … that if you comply with the police and you lay on the ground with your hands up, and if you speak to them like my client was speaking to them, as Americans, we try to believe that that will not result in you getting shot,” Napoleon said.
Now Kinsey, his attorney said, doesn’t know what to tell his children.
“Physically, he will recover, but mentally, he felt like he did everything he could possibly do and that wasn’t good enough,” Napoleon said.
“You can’t shoot unarmed people, period.”