The teenager accused of executing 4 folks and injuring at the least 9 others throughout a mass taking pictures at a highschool in Georgia on Wednesday morning was greeted by the kind of police restraint not often proven towards Black folks, together with youth, who’re suspected of committing far much less of an egregious crime.

Colt Gray, who’s white, was arrested with out incident regardless of being closely armed and allegedly recent of a mass homicide at Apalachee High School in Winder, a metropolis situated about 52 miles northeast of Atlanta. The 14-year-old suspect was miraculously taken into custody alive in a obtrusive instance of how the police don’t preserve the identical sort of vitality they present towards unarmed Black males, particularly.

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In case you missed it, Gray, an Apalachee High School pupil, was peacefully arrested after “He gave up and got on the ground,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith informed reporters throughout a media briefing.

Gray — the topic of a federal investigation into on-line threats being made towards a college final yr — was subsequently charged Wednesday with homicide as an grownup within the killings of scholars Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, each 14, in addition to academics Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.

NBC News reported that an unidentified sheriff’s deputy working as a college useful resource officer “engaged” Gray after the carnage had been carried out.

It just isn’t solely clear what precisely which means, however after being “engaged,” Gray “quickly realized that if he did not give up, it would end with an OIS,” Smith mentioned utilizing the police abbreviation for an “officer-involved shooting.”

In different phrases, it seems that Gray was afforded the privilege of getting a alternative after, as police declare, the teenager killed 4 folks.

It’s a privilege that was by no means loved by Black folks like Tamir Rice, the Ohio 12-year-old who was killed inside seconds of police arriving at a park in Cleveland the place the boy was enjoying with a toy gun.

Notably, in contrast to Gray, Rice was not suspected of killing anybody, not to mention finishing up a mass homicide in a college, when the police “engaged” him and determined deadly pressure was one of the best strategy.

Also in contrast to Gray’s case, the killing of Rice by no means resulted in felony prices.

The checklist of unarmed Black individuals who have been killed on the spot for doing far lower than what Gray stands accused of is a prolonged one.

Whether it’s Tyre Nichols in Memphis or George Floyd in Minneapolis or Eric Garner in New York or Sonya Massey in Illinois, none of them and loads of others who met comparable fates regardless of not posing a mortal menace have been ever proven the kind of restraint the sheriff’s deputy who “engaged” Gray confirmed the accused homicidal teen.

Even in conditions the place Black suspects had surrendered to the police like Gray reportedly did, there may be not often any such restraint proven by legislation enforcement.

That consists of the case of Emmanuel Malik Millard, who was proven on bodycam together with his palms raised following a short pursuit seconds earlier than a Georgia police officer shot the 20-year-old Black driver within the head final yr.

Unlike Gray, Millard was not armed. Thus, the menace he posed to the police was probably exponentially minimal in comparison with Gray, who’s accused of wielding an assault rifle within the lethal mass taking pictures inside a highschool. That officer was charged in April with the involuntary manslaughter of Millard.

This is America.

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