The tragicomedy of the Florida sheriff’s deputy who got into a shootout with an acorn

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I don’t trust the police.

I am a Black woman in America who has seen the police do dangerous and corrupt things over the years, and it has left me believing that the threat they pose to the safety of the general public far outweighs the supposed benefits that come with having an active police force. 

I recently heard another story that affirmed this for me. I will preface this by saying that the story I’m going to tell is wild, son, and there are parts of it that are going to make you laugh, but even as you laugh at what could be called the stupidity and illogical fear of a Florida law enforcement officer, please keep in mind that his actions unnecessarily endangered the life of an unarmed Black man and that sobering fact that is the most important detail in this story. 

The tragicomedy of the Florida sheriff’s deputy who got into a shootout with an acorn
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Shoplifting is not a capital offense, but Ta’Kiya Young died for it

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A police officer who had only been in her presence for 12 seconds shot and killed her. 

He didn’t know her name. He didn’t know she was pregnant and due to have a baby girl in two months. He didn’t know she had previously been accused of petty crimes. He didn’t even know if she had actually stolen any liquor. 

In the moment he pulled his gun on Ta’Kiya Young while yelling for her to get out of her car, all he knew was she had been accused of stealing from a grocery store, and he decided that was enough to warrant aggressively pulling a gun on her and threatening her life — a life he eventually took. 

Shoplifting is not a capital offense, but Ta’Kiya Young died for it

Police shot and killed Ta’Kiya Young and her unborn daughter. Now they’re playing the ‘victim.’

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The police in Blendon Township, Ohio, are already hard at work building a case for victim-blaming and making Ta’Kiya Young responsible for her own death while simultaneously framing the cop who killed her and her unborn daughter as the victim.

Before we even knew the details of what happened during that Aug. 24 shooting and well before the release of police bodycam footage on Friday, the Columbus Dispatch had already given us a synopsis of Ta’Kiya’s life story, including the fact that she was a teenage mother to two sons, 6-year-old Ja’Kobie and 3-year-old Ja’Kenli. At the time she was killed, Ta’Kiya was seven months pregnant with her third child, a girl who was due to be born in November. 

The Dispatch made sure to mention Ta’Kiya Young had some minor criminal infractions in her past and that on the day she died, the grandmother who raised her had called the police on her to report her for violating a protection order, and a misdemeanor charge was filed against Ta’Kiya. 

None of that matters in the context of the police officer shooting and killing her, but we are being fed this information anyway because whenever a Black person is the victim of an extrajudicial killing by a police officer, there is an immediate rush to dehumanize them and make them less sympathetic in the eyes of the public. 

The fact is, the police didn’t know anything about Ta’Kiya Young when they approached her to follow up on an accusation made by a Kroger employee that Young had shoplifted alcohol from the store. 

Police shot and killed Ta’Kiya Young and her unborn daughter. Now they’re playing the ‘victim.’