The Philadelphia police officers who shot and killed a Black man suffering a mental breakdown should probably not be charged with murder, a lawyer for the man’s family said on Thursday, saying the police lacked training and experience to handle the situation.
Shaka Johnson made the comments after viewing the bodycam footage of Monday’s incident, in which 27-year-old Walter Wallace was gunned down by two officers responding to what his relatives say was a call for help with a mental health crisis.
Johnson said the footage shows one of the officers saying “shoot him” before they both fired at Wallace, who was not heeding their orders to drop a knife. He said the footage also showed Wallace in an “obvious mental health crisis”.
He said he did not think the officers should face murder charges and that he hoped the investigation into Wallace’s death would lead to policing reform that would prevent similar shootings in the future.
“It was instant panic from those officers,” Johnson said.
The turmoil over Wallace’s death has turned Philadelphia into the latest U.S. flashpoint over racial justice days ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election.
(Reporting by Hannah McKay in Philadelphia and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Rosalba O’Brien)
