27-year-old Anthony Hill was killed by an officer in DeKalb County, Georgia, yesterday, March 9.?Cops were called after residents of the apartment complex in Chamblee, where Mr. Hill lived, saw him acting bizarre and moving about the premises naked. At one point, he was even seen hanging from a balcony.
Witnesses describe some interesting behavior from the victim, but one witness said he still seemed somewhat calm. The witness stated:
?He tells me, ?I’m OK, I’m OK.? That’s what he was saying….He was acting crazy but he was calm like he didn’t know where he was. He was like kind of lost in his face.?
According to the DeKalb County Director of Public Safety, the shooting occurred when Hill started running towards the responding officer. The officer called for him to stop charging him, ran backwards, drew his weapon, and fired twice.
The Director is saying that aid was rendered to Hill by the officer, but he died at the scene having suffered a ?gunshot wound?to the upper torso.?The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is taking over the investigation of the shooting. It may be due to the fact that?Hill was a 27-year-old black male and, the officer involved is a white male.
According to Hill’s social media accounts, he suffered from bipolar disorder. He is also a veteran of the United States Air Force and served in the Middle East.
There are many troubling aspects about this case. It seemed like Anthony Hill had lingering mental issues but was not known to be a bad guy. Why aren’t cops (many of them anyway) adequately trained to treat and identify people like this? Of course we know the stereotyping of black males, that takes place way too often in this country, probably doesn’t allow them to view them as HUMAN, much less “in control” of their behavior.
A man running around in broad daylight naked, through an apartment complex, clearly has some sort of mental issues that should have been identified in some way. Also, why can’t police officers “take down” or “subdue” a subject who is unarmed, without killing them? This makes NO sense. I am beyond sick of hearing stories of black men being killed, because of some Hulk story, where the deceased “could have” killed them with their hands.
We should have high standards for police officers and their training should be very intense. For example, the officer who killed Hill was said to have had a taser on his person at the time of the shooting. Why not use that? Some officers also have batons, stun guns, and numerous other things that can take someone down without killing them.
But no. People like Anthony Hill have no chance. The cop came and instead of taking other measures, he just shoots him. And where does he shoot him? In the torso. If one HAS to fire their gun, why can’t they aim for a less deadly area of the body? Officers in other nations are trained to do this. Again, I cannot understand for the life of me why officers are, a.) so quick to draw their weapons as a FIRST choice and, b.) shoot to kill . This seems like a barbaric way to run a police force and causes too many tragedies, like the death of Anthony Hill.
As we await the investigation, I hope more evidence will become public and we can understand exactly what happened in the moments leading up to the killing. But with a naked man, it should have been very obvious that he didn’t have a weapon. This killing is hard to view as justified.
Ironically, Hill had been keeping up with the shooting of black people and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Here are a couple of tweets from Anthony just four days ago.
