Another black teenager has been shot and killed by police. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Vonderrick Myers Jr., 18, was stopped by an off-duty officer for a random “pedestrian check.”
The police officer claims that Myers ran and began firing a gun before he shot and killed the teen. However, eyewitnesses have told a different account of the incident. Myers’ cousin, Teyonna, said Vonderrick was unarmed and only had a sandwich in his hand when he was shot.
The hashtag “16” soon became a trending topic on Twitter as word spread that Myers had been killed by the officer after being shot 16 times. Moments after the shooting, Myers’ mother arrived at the scene and fainted.
Dozens of people in the community eventually gathered at the scene and soon began protesting the shooting. The crowds became heated and are still upset over the unjust shooting of Michael Brown in August.
Officer Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Brown, has yet to be arrested. This killing and other cases of police brutality prove that most police officers are incapable of using proper judgment when dealing with black men.
There used be a federal standard for diversity training in every police department in the nation, that practice needs to be reinstituted.
