the philadelphia night once again lit by
flames
tuesday saw more clashes between police
and protesters
with more blood spilled on both sides as
people vented their anger
at the death of walter wallace jr
some took the opportunity to indulge in
looting earning a stern rebuke
from walter wallace senior i don't
condone
no violence tearing up the city using
the stores
and all this chaos for them and i would
feel
like everybody having respect for my
family
and my son to stop this violence and
chaos
as security forces and protesters faced
off
mr wallace refused to blame the police
outright
but called for justice for his son's
death i mean we got good cops
and we got bags that's the system in in
the system
i'm not faltened somebody had to be
all accountable for what they did walter
wallace jr's mother
was more forthright i was telling the
police to stop
don't shoot my son please don't shoot my
son they paid me no money
it was deadly wallace reportedly had a
lengthy criminal record including
convictions for assault and robbery
and at the time of his death was
awaiting trial for allegedly threatening
to shoot a woman police said that when
he was fatally shot
he was wielding a knife that he refused
to drop but some protesters were adamant
that racism
and a lack of training on the part of
the police led unnecessarily to
wallace's death
you cannot retrain hatred how can i tell
a younger man well
don't do that don't do that don't do
that when all he can see is bam bam bam
bam it was a color thing but as you can
see it's no longer that this is like
affecting everybody
everybody's affected by it because that
could have been anybody's child
in a different neighborhood where it's
less crime and things of that nature
that the situation probably would have
been handled
a lot differently pennsylvania governor
tom wilf announced the deployment of
several hundred national guard troops to
philadelphia
as the city braces for further unrest
for more on this we're now joined by
joseph hutchinson he's a u.s civil
rights lawyer
currently based here in berlin joseph
sending in troops sounds very extreme is
that necessary and is it
even legal
so um necessary i don't think so um but
legal definitely so typically when we
see governors who have
the executive authority in their states
calling in the national guard it's
usually more for
um kind of like natural disasters so
whenever you have hurricanes for example
then
the national guards might be called in
to help with things like that
what the governor wolf is doing in this
instance though is showing that
the defense of property is more
important than the difference of life
so i think it's out of concern that
there would be looting
or violent protests that he's
pre-actively called
in the national guard even though it
doesn't really seem to be much of an
emergency that would typically warrant
it joseph how do you gauge this
is this likely to cause protests like we
saw after the killing of george floyd
i think uh the problem that we're
noticing in the states is that
um you know we heard it in the segment
that this man walter wallace jr was
armed
there are reports of his prior criminal
record and
unfortunately what we see is what we
call respectability
politics in the united states for black
victims
of crime to be treated with empathy and
respect they typically have to be you
know
the most uh innocent person you could
ever imagine
so i think the difference here with
george floyd's killing
is that um yes he was holding a knife
but i think what activists are still
pointing out is
you know just because he was holding a
knife does not mean he should have been
shot um certainly shouldn't have been
shot fatally
so i think for this to have the same
kind of impact and i think that's why
people are taking to the streets in
philadelphia because they can see what's
happening
but unfortunately there is that hurdle
to get over that people might not in
this instance
be able to view him with the same
humanity
you mentioned it um earlier uh that he
was he was
fatally shot and i think he was uh was
shot multiple times for just
wielding a knife that's what i call
excessive force isn't it
and does the police need to be reformed
and especially retrained and is this
actually happening
um i think the problem so in limited
instances
there are because the police are under
local control so not under federal
oversight
you have some communities now realizing
that the police are out of control that
the entire
relationship between the police and the
people needs to be
revived this is absolutely uh
excessive use of force but from a
policeman's perspective they're allowed
to say well my life was in danger i was
allowed to do anything to protect myself
um there's a long list of demands that
need to take effect but something i just
want to point out
we've seen oh there's video of this
murder we've seen them
shoot him but these individual police
officers will almost certainly never be
held accountable
and even if there is some financial
settlement with the
family that's going to come out of
taxpayer money
joseph hutchinson a u.s civil rights
lawyer based here in berlin
thank you very much
thank you
you