Police shot and seriously wounded a California college football player this week after a bar fight went left. Now, the wounded man’s lawyer says his client was a hero who ended up taking police bullets just minutes after he might have saved many others’ lives.
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K’aun Green, 20, was shot multiple times by San Jose cops after the incident in which even police now acknowledge the gun he had was not his. There’s both police body camera footage, surveillance and witness video of the chaotic incident at La Victoria Taqueria. But other than the fact that Green was certainly shot by police after the restaurant fight, there’s little agreement between the cops’ version of the story and how Green’s lawyer said it went down. Green was “minding his own business” inside the restaurant when a fight broke out and someone pulled a gun, his lawyer, Andante Pointer, told the local NBC News affiliate. Rather than exit the chaos, the 6’4’, 233-lb Contra Costa College linebacker stepped in and wrested the gun away from someone in the crowd, making him a “hero”—until cops showed up. “The police yelled, ‘Drop the gun!’ and without giving my client a second to understand that it was the police, or to turn around and see what was going on or even to drop the gun, he was shot multiple times,” Pointer said.But San Jose Police Chief Anthony Mata says that’s not all there is to the story. A fatal shooting had just occurred near La Victoria just minutes before a call came in about a gun inside the restaurant, he told NBC. Cops who showed up on the scene had no idea if the two incidents were related at the time (turns out they weren’t), and had to make a split second decision when they saw Green backing out the door of the restaurant with the gun in his hand.
Green’s injuries are described as “non-life threatening” by police.
While race hasn’t come up in the discussion over the Green shooting–Green is Black and the race of the officers who fired is unknown–the San Jose Police Department hasn’t been without incidents in which racism cast doubt on some officers.
In 2021, one officer was fired from the department, another suspended and another retired after an internal investigation into a series of racist social media posts. The year before, the department was criticized for its violent treatment of people participating in protests against police violence after the death of George Floyd.
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