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This would make another good thread, but I have no access to this article.
If it will play the video shows it all. Shot the kid 18 more time while he lay on the ground.
Gina Via thought she saw an elk as she drove through the high desert of southern New Mexico one night last summer. As she drew closer, she realized it was a person walking dangerously close to the road. She decided to call 911.
Jacob Diaz-Austin, one of a few sheriff’s deputies patrolling Otero County’s 6,627 square miles, took the dispatcher’s call for a welfare check on a possibly intoxicated pedestrian. He switched on his lights, cranked up the volume to the club hit “In da Getto,” and sped to the scene, topping 120 miles an hour, according to audio and video recordings obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
The deputy slowed, stopped, and focused his spotlight on Elijah Hadley, a 17-year-old walking along the median near his home on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Fearful after getting beaten up the day before, Hadley carried a BB gun.
Within minutes, Diaz-Austin fired approximately 22 shots at Hadley. He shot four times just after Hadley dropped the BB gun.
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Footage from Jacob Diaz-Austin’s dash camera show the moments before he begins shooting. New Mexico State Police
A few minutes later, Diaz-Austin shot Hadley about 18 more times as he lay on the ground. Diaz-Austin now faces a first-degree murder charge. He has pleaded not guilty.
Last year, 1,260 people were killed by law enforcement—the highest level since data-crunching organizations began keeping track a decade ago. A major factor driving the upward trend is surprising: Sheriff’s departments that generally patrol more rural slices of America are killing more civilians.
Sheriff’s departments, which generally have jurisdiction over counties, were involved in about a third of the police killings in 2024, despite making up just a quarter of law-enforcement nationwide, according to the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence. Killings by sheriffs rose 43% from 2013, while that number rose 3% for police departments, which patrol cities and towns.
The numbers speak to a widening gap between urban and rural law enforcement since the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sent floods of protesters into the streets of American cities. Big-city departments faced pressure to dial back aggressive practices and adopt changes to reduce shootings by officers.
Sheriffs—most elected in partisan races, unlike police chiefs—have long
espoused a tough law-and-order approach that is supported by their constituents. Particularly as violence
spiked nationwide during the pandemic, sheriff’s departments were quick to unleash forceful tactics to tamp down unrest.
