Last month, the ACLU released a video featuring the police execution of Milton Hall, which occurred in 2012. Hall was a black, homeless, mentally ill man from Saginaw, Michigan. He was shot at 46 times and hit 14 times by eight white police officers for holding a pen knife in a parking lot. Police previously claimed that he made an aggressive movement; however, the footage paints a different picture.
Both the county prosecutor and the Department of Justice declined to bring charges against the officers involved. Back in 2012, Saginaw Prosecutor Thomas said in a statement that a thorough investigation did not yield enough evidence in the case.
In turn, the ACLU presented the video of the shooting at a hearing about racial disparities in the criminal justice system before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Milton Hall’s mother, Jewell, was disappointed by the prosecutor’s report that declared the police officers were justified in the killing. According to his mother, Hall was a community worker who promoted equality. When he took his medication, he did well. When he did not take his medication, he was impatient and sometimes intolerant. She views the shooting as a police-sanctioned assassination.
Milton Hall was only 49 when police took his life
The video raises many important questions. Even though Hall was vastly outnumbered, why didn’t police try any other methods to disarm him? Exactly where are the aggressive movements that supposedly justified the shooting? Was this shooting really justified at all?
Creating awareness about situations like this is one way to help ensure this does not happen again. With enough public outcry, perhaps police will be held accountable for brutal killings like this. How many individuals will be killed by police before people stand up and say “enough is enough?” Police brutality has been a disturbing trend in the media over the last few months with this being one of the most chilling videos released to date.