Law enforcement and first responders are shown at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on September 4, 2024, after a shooting was reported. | Source: CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA / Getty
The teenager accused of executing four people and injuring at least nine others during a mass shooting at a high school in Georgia on Wednesday morning was greeted by the type of police restraint rarely shown toward Black people, including youth, who are suspected of committing far less of an egregious crime.
Colt Gray, who is white, was arrested without incident despite being heavily armed and allegedly fresh of a mass murder at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city located about 52 miles northeast of Atlanta. The 14-year-old suspect was miraculously taken into custody alive in a glaring example of how the police don’t keep the same kind of energy they show toward unarmed Black males, in particular.
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In case you missed it, Gray, an Apalachee High School student, was peacefully arrested after “He gave up and got on the ground,” Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told reporters during a media briefing.
Gray — the subject of a federal investigation into online threats being made against a school last year — was subsequently charged Wednesday with murder as an adult in the killings of students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, as well as teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53.
NBC News reported that an unidentified sheriff’s deputy working as a school resource officer “engaged” Gray after the carnage had been carried out.
It is not entirely clear what exactly that means, but after being “engaged,” Gray “quickly realized that if he did not give up, it would end with an OIS,” Smith said using the police abbreviation for an “officer-involved shooting.”
In other words, it appears that Gray was afforded the privilege of having a choice after, as police claim, the teen killed four people.
It’s a privilege that was never enjoyed by Black people like Tamir Rice, the Ohio 12-year-old who was killed within seconds of police arriving at a park in Cleveland where the boy was playing with a toy gun.
Notably, unlike Gray, Rice was not suspected of killing anyone, let alone carrying out a mass murder in a school, when the police “engaged” him and decided lethal force was the best approach.
Also unlike Gray’s case, the killing of Rice never resulted in criminal charges.
The list of unarmed Black people who were killed on the spot for doing far less than what Gray stands accused of is a lengthy 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 plenty of others who met similar fates despite not posing a mortal threat were ever shown the type of restraint the sheriff’s deputy who “engaged” Gray showed the accused homicidal teen.
Even in situations where Black suspects had surrendered to the police like Gray reportedly did, there is rarely any such restraint shown by law enforcement.
That includes the case of Emmanuel Malik Millard, who was shown on bodycam with his hands raised following a brief pursuit seconds before a Georgia police officer shot the 20-year-old Black driver in the head last year.
Unlike Gray, Millard was not armed. Thus, the threat he posed to the police was likely exponentially minimal compared to Gray, who is accused of wielding an assault rifle in the deadly mass shooting inside of a high school. That officer was charged in April with the involuntary manslaughter of Millard.
This is America.
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