A 20-year old black man, Terrance Kellom, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Mitchell Quinn. You probably didn’t hear about this. After all, there is a lot of news, and you can’t hear it all. But what if Kellom was shot in the back, much like Walter Scott? Why do you know all about Walter Scott’s killing, but nothing about Terrence Kellom?
Terrance Kellom, a young black man who was killed during an arrest in Detroit last month, was shot in the back, the attorney for Kellom’s family claimed Friday — a claim that appears to contradict a federal officer’s earlier allegation that the shooting was justified because Kellom had charged at him with a hammer.
Mitchell Quinn, a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, shot Kellom the afternoon of April 27 during a raid at Kellom’s home in Detroit, according to Quinn’s lawyer and others. Several officers on a multi-agency fugitive apprehension task force were serving an arrest warrant for Kellom, 20, who had previously been charged in several crimes and was wanted as a suspect in an armed robbery of a pizza delivery person.
Unlike Scott, who was stopped for a trivial traffic offense, Kellom isn’t the poster boy for sympathy. He wasn’t pure and pristine, the sort of victim we feel inclined to rally behind. By the allegations against him, at least, he comes off as a violent sort of guy, the one the cops always talk about as being dangerous.
So what? Whether cops go after bad dudes or good dudes, doesn’t it still matter when they shoot him in the back? If a defendant is to be executed, then it comes after a trial, after a guilty verdict, after the sentence. The cops don’t get to do it there and then, no matter how bad a dude they think he is.
So why don’t you know all about Terrence Kellom? One reason may be that the evidence of Kellom’s execution remains hidden.
Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, cited the pending investigation Friday and declined to comment.
Mitchell said the release of the autopsy report “would create outrage” … “because of how many times” Kellom was shot “and where he was shot.”
Edit: The “outrage” quote I’ve misattributed to Miller came from Karri Mitchell, attorneys for Terrence Kellom’s family, not Maria Miller. That said, it changes the “credit” attributed to Miller, but leaves the concealment of the autopsy in the same status of impropriety.
To her credit, Miller didn’t dance around the reason for concealing the autopsy report, but pretty much gave up the answer in her excuse. It “would create outrage.” Revealing the truth, the number of shots, the location where Quinn’s bullets penetrated the body of Terrence Kellom, if disclosed to the public, would create outrage.
If so, shouldn’t it? What possible reason is there to conceal outrageous law enforcement conduct from the public? What authority does a prosecutor have to deny the public the right to know what this agent did?
There is an argument to be made about prejudicing the potential jury pool, though this is a perpetually disingenuous argument since no prosecutor, no cop has ever lost sleep over such a concern when the defendant isn’t a cop. But there remains a distinction that cannot be ignored.
If ICE agent Mitchell Quinn executed Terrence Kellom by shooting him in the back, he did so with a government issued gun, carrying a government issued shield, on government paid time and under his governmental authority.
This wasn’t some random criminal murdering some guy who may have been a bad dude, but an agent acting in the public’s name at the public’s behest. He was ours, and we get to know what he did in our name.
And yet, you probably knew nothing about the killing of Terrence Kellom. Until now. And while you still can’t be sure what happened, how many shots were fired and where agent Quinn was aiming as he pulled the trigger, you do know that Kellom may not have been the sort of guy you want to invite over to dinner.
So do you care? Or is it different when an agent shoots a bad dude in the back and kills him? It’s so much easier to feel outrage when the dead guy is the sort of person one can rally around. The killing of Terrence Kellom may test our tolerance for empathy, our ability to give a damn even when the dead guy isn’t a particularly nice fellow.
But before we can be tested, we need to know it happened. Given the background information on Kellom, it must have been really bad for Miller to say that concealing the truth is necessary to avoid outrage.
The assertion that the the autopsy “would create outrage” appears to have come from Karri Mitchell, the family’s attorney, and not from Maria Miller from the prosecutor’s office.
You’re right. I blew the names, and have added in an edit to correct the error.
Did Miller comment on the effect of releasing the autopsy, or did (Mitchell) Quinn?
Too many similar names. The “Mitchell” referred to in the quote is Karri Mitchell, attorney for the Kellom family. As the edit shows, I confused it with Miller, the prosecutor spokesperson.
My answer to nearly all “where is the outrage” questions is only a few can make the news. However, the idea of needing a sympathetic victim is an old problem. It afflicts all civil rights issues as well as criminal prosecutions. Smart criminals know which victims the community does not care about.
“”The federal agent at the center of the controversy, however, has not been interviewed yet by Detroit police because he is off-limits for at least 48 hours under federal policy, a source close to the investigation has said.””
This quote from the link is quite alarming. Hiding the accused from Police interviews is only to make sure the official stories all coincide nicely., and the very truthful answers that are made at the time can be avoided until a suitable pack of lies is concocted.
Welcome to the LEOBOR. Much as they may not care all that much for our rights, they like theirs a lot, and theirs are much better than ours.
But what’s not to like about protecting law enforcement personnel from unreasonable investigation and persecution caused by extraordinary circumstances in the official performance of their duties?
LEOBOR is the leap in frogs that keeps us all safe! Who else is going to do the job, a bunch of bunny rabbits?
Someone is going to take you seriously one day, and I’ll have to clean up the mess. Don’t do that to me.