After police shot Earl “Shaleek” Pinckney in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Sunday, they said the 20-year-old was armed with a knife, threatening his mother, and refusing to follow their commands. But Kim Thomas says that her son wasn’t holding a knife when police shot him through a window, putting a bullet in Pinckney’s heart.
According to the police account offered on Monday, officers were responding to a call about a man endangering his mother. When they arrived, Pinckney was holding a knife to Thomas’ neck, but refused to put the weapon down. An unidentified officer shot the 20-year-old as his mother tried to get away.
But Thomas has since disputed the officers’ narrative, maintaining that Pinckney wasn’t holding a knife and was actually shot through a window.
Thomas said that cops were called earlier in the day about a family dispute, which picked up later in the evening before police arrived. Although her son, who was bipolar, had been arguing with his sister and a niece in his bedroom, Thomas was able to calm him down. Moments later, as Pinckney held her head, someone shined a light through his bedroom window and shot him in the heart.
“He didn’t have nothing in his hands,” Thomas said. “He was holding my head. They never came in.”
Marques Thomas, Pinckney’s brother, told Penn Live that at least one dozen officers had surrounded his house on Sunday. He said they climbed to the second floor and shot his younger brother — the father of a two-week old baby — through the window.
“He wasn’t dangerous,” his mother said. “He didn’t deserve this.”
Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico’s office launched an investigation on Monday, as protesters marched through Harrisburg. The shooting officer is now on paid administrative leave.
While the details of the case are still murky, Pinckney’s shooting shows that cops are still ill-equipped to handle tense situations with people dealing with a mental illness, such as bipolar disorder. According to one highly-cited study from 2012, about half of all the people killed by police have a mental illness, which is largely attributed to the fact that few police departments in the country train officers to approach people with mental health problems.
Time and time again police are called for assistance when a person is having an episode, but wind up pulling the trigger. That was the case in July, when police were called about Arnaldo Rios, who a 911 caller identified as a “mentally ill” man who looked suicidal. Although Rios was sitting in the middle of a North Miami street and holding a toy, SWAT officer Jonathan Aledda tried to shoot him — hitting therapist Charles Kinsey instead. Kinsey survived, but countless others have not, including Ezell Ford, Kajieme Powell, Tanisha Anderson, Quintonio Legrier, and Natasha McKenna.
Because police aren’t trained to de-escalate people in crisis, they often arrive at a scene and make the situation worse by shouting commands and brandishing their weapons. Some departments, including the Los Angeles Police Department, have special co-responder teams of mental health experts who collaborate with officers at the scene. But officers aren’t required to use those teams.