During an interview with ABC News released on Wednesday, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said that the fatal police shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, OH was a situation “where a taser should have been used, and yet a gun was used.”
Johnson stated, “Well, you know, we have a situation in Minnesota where a police officer claimed to be reaching for a taser, pulled a gun. And now, we have a situation in Ohio where a taser should have been used, and yet a gun was used. We have to create a new standard of trust and safety when it comes to law enforcement. And that can only happen if we have a federal policy floor that will give all of us a sense of security that when officers have been called out to these incidents, they have the proper training, they understand how to de-escalate, and the proper weapons are used that’s consistent with the threat or apparent threat that’s there. Now, until the investigation is completed and other footage come[s] out, we really don’t know what happened.”
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