Describing the night he was shot, Cousins said he was walking down an alleyway when he was ambushed by armed police. West Midlands police confirmed that he had been arrested a total of seven times since 2014. “My community was very shaken by this incident and have since lost all faith in West Midlands police,” she wrote. “This case points to the police mentality of ‘once a gang member, always a gang member’, you can’t change and you will always be associated with that [gang] label. The implications of this narrative are deeply concerning, as seen by this case.”Cousins’s shooting was the first time a West Midlands police officer had shot someone since 2000.

Source: The Guardian May 11, 2018 05:03 UTC