The Making of A Great America Uprooting the Spirit of Racism

This is an excerpt from the chapter entitled "A Few Bad Apples":

Here is an account that made national news but did not garner the attention of some other high-profile deaths. In this account, an armed man was experiencing a bout with mental illness. He hadn’t taken his medication. He was clearly unarmed because he was completely naked.

“DECATUR, GA - A former Georgia police officer convicted of aggravated assault and other crimes in the fatal shooting of an unarmed, naked man was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison. 

Robert ‘Chip’ Olsen was responding to a call of a naked man behaving erratically at an Atlanta-area apartment complex in March 2015 when he killed 26-year-old Anthony Hill, a black Air Force veteran who'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD.

Olsen, who is white, was convicted of one count of aggravated assault, two counts of violating his oath of office and one count of making a false statement. Jurors acquitted him on two counts of felony murder.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge LaTisha Dear Jackson sentenced Olsen to a total of 20 years, with 12 years to serve in prison, followed by eight years of probation.” (Brumback, 2019)

This next account is one of the most disturbing accounts I have ever seen. A mental health professional, Charles Kinsey, is trying to help his autistic patient because someone has called the police, and his patient is carrying an object that could be misconstrued as a weapon. Kinsey is concerned that his patient may die because he was not complying with the police officers’ instructions. He was incapable of understanding them. (Fieldstadt, 2016)

The police officers have all taken protective positions behind telephone poles and cars and have their weapons out, aimed, and ready to fire. Then something unbelievable happens; one of the officers shoots his assault rifle, but not at the patient. He shoots it at the black unarmed mental health professional who is lying on the ground, on his back, with his hands fully extended in the air.

Something in this police officer’s experience caused him to consider the unarmed black man a greater threat than the non-black man who is sitting up with an object in his hand and not complying. It is interesting to hear that one of the policemen described the patient as “white.” Kingsley’s blackness was considered a greater threat while lying on his back, complying with instructions, with hands outstretched in the air, and while yelling that he and his patient were unarmed.