Neat Crime Prevention Strategy, Austin PD

[Content Note: Gun violence; police malfeasance; racism.]

Last Friday in Austin, APD Detective Charles Kleinert shot and killed Larry Eugene Jackson, Jr., a 32-year-old black man with whom Kleinert, an investigator with the department's robbery unit, had an interaction following a bank robbery that Jackson did not commit.

Jackson misidentified himself when he was questioned by the bank manager that afternoon outside the bank on West 35th Street. Jackson had previously tried to enter the bank, police said, but the door was locked because of the ongoing robbery investigation. Jackson briefly left, police say, then returned and tried again to enter the bank before he was confronted by the manager, who in turn told Kleinert, who was inside the bank conducting a follow-up investigation of the morning robbery, about the exchange. Kleinert went outside to talk with Jackson and after a two- or three-minute conversation – captured by surveillance cameras – Jackson fled, police say.

...Police said that Kleinert, dressed in plain clothes and displaying his APD credentials on his shirt collar, took off on foot after Jackson – why, exactly, Kleinert felt the need to initiate the pursuit remains unclear. (With video of Jackson and info about his "fictitious" ID in hand it would seem Jackson could be found later.) [Austin Police Assistant Chief Brian Manley] said that Kleinert's reasons for taking immediate action would be explored during the department's criminal and administrative inquiries into the shooting. The department will "have a better idea [of] what his intentions were" and "what was his mindset" as the investigation proceeds, Manley said. And although it's not illegal to do so, it's "really not a good idea to run from police," he said.

Wow. That is some pretty shameless victim-blaming, right there. And there's yet more.

Manley said police are "confident" that Jackson – shot and killed by APD Detective Charles Kleinert on Friday afternoon – had come to the Benchmark Bank where the detective was investigating an earlier (unrelated) robbery to "commit a fraud" and was not there to conduct any legitimate business.

...Although police say they've ruled out any connection between Jackson and the robber who struck the facility that morning (a robber who police believe is connected to at least three other bank robberies, including two in Austin and one in San Antonio), Manley told reporters at a Monday press briefing that they are nonetheless certain that Jackson was up to no good.

That's quite a crime prevention strategy, eh? As long as someone is "up to no good," police are justified in killing them. Cool.

You know, it's really interesting how men who shoot and kill black men and teenagers, and the people who publicly defend the men who do that, are super keen to put those black men and teenagers on trial only once they're already dead.

[H/T to Jess.]