Fatal police shooting of Native American woman prompts racial bias questions

Fatal police shooting of Native American woman prompts racial bias questions


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Loreal Tsingine killed by officer Austin Shipley in late March as fatal shootings of Native Americans by police have increased in 2016

In body camera footage, Loreal Tsingine is seen getting up and walking toward an officer with a small pair of scissors in her left hand, and another officer quickly approaches her from behind. Photograph: YouTube



Body-camera footage released on Thursday shows an Arizona police officer drawing his gun on a petite woman armed with a small pair of scissors – prompting some to ask whether the use of force has to do with racial bias against Native Americans, who are disproportionately killed by police nationwide. Loreal Tsingine, 27, was shot and killed by the Winslow police officer Austin Shipley in late March after officers suspected her of shoplifting in a local store and confronted her. The footage, first obtained by the Arizona Daily Sun, contains no audio but appears to show an officer trying to restrain Tsingine and then shoving her to the ground. In the video, Tsingine gets up and walks toward Shipley with a small pair of medical scissors in her left hand, and another officer quickly approaches her from behind. Shipley draws his gun and directs it at Tsingine, and the footage is cut off before he fires the fatal shot.
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Shipley’s training records show two of his fellow officers had serious concerns that he was too quick to go for his service weapon, that he ignored directives from superiors, and that he was liable to falsify reports and not control his emotions. A day before Shipley’s training ended, nearly three years ago, a police corporal recommended that the Winslow police department not retain him.

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Nationwide, Native Americans are disproportionately killed by police. Based on data from the Counted, the Guardian’s database of police killings in the US, fatal police shootings of black, white, Hispanic and Asian Americans have all gone down slightly or remained roughly the same from 2015 into 2016, but twice as many Native Americans have been killed over the same period.
Because the number of Native Americans, relative to other racial and ethnic categories, is quite small, just a handful of incidents can dramatically change the per capita rate. Still, 13 Native American people have been killed just over halfway through 2016, more than the 10 that were killed in all of 2015.

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“We know that many people don’t see us as human. We’re relics of centuries of lore,” Moya-Smith said. “We first need to get the cops to recognize us as human, and hopefully then they won’t think of themselves as the judge, the jury and the executioner.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/30/native-american-police-deaths-loreal-tsingine