(Google Images)
The blogosphere is ablaze with reports that North Miami Beach police officers actually use mug shots of black men as shooting targets. McNelly Torres and Willard Shepard of NBC Miami report that the practice was discovered at a shooting range by the family member of one of the men on whose mugshot was being used for target practice for an arrest more than 15 years ago. Torres and Shepard write:
“It was an ordinary Saturday morning last month when Sgt. Valerie Deant arrived at the shooting range in Medley, or so she thought.
Deant, who plays clarinet with the Florida Army National Guard’s 13th Army Band, and her fellow soldiers were at the shooting range for their annual weapons qualifications training.
What the soldiers discovered when they entered the range made them angry: mug shots of African American men apparently used as targets by North Miami Beach Police snipers, who had used the range before the Guardsmen.
Even more startling for Deant, one of the images was her brother. It was Woody Deant’s mug shot that taken 15 years ago, after he was arrested in connection to a drag race in 2000 that left two people dead. His mug shot was among the pictures of five minorities used as targets by North Miami Beach police, all of them riddled by bullets.
‘I was like why is my brother being used for target practice?’ Deant asked.”
The facility stated that they own the property, not the targets used by the North Miami Beach police force that practice there.
Read more at NBC Miami.
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