Terrifying brutality of Nicolas Morales’s death at the hands of the police — deemed “legally justifiable” by the State Attorney — cannot be allowed to stand… Justice for Nicolas, deep and lasting reform for the community, must be done. Nicolas Morales Besanilla is dead, killed by Corporal Pierre Jean of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office. That’s the who and the what of it. He was killed on a quiet street in Farmworker Village just outside of Immokalee, in the early morning of September 17, 2020. That’s the where and the when. Those are all the settled facts, simple, straightforward. Only the why remains in dispute. And it’s the why that will either drive deepening conflict, or bring about justice, and long-overdue change. We now know, nearly five months to the day after Nicolas was killed, what the State Attorney thinks about why Nicolas was killed. The State Attorney’s Office announced last Friday that it would not seek charges against Cpl. Jean for killing Nicolas. According to the official press release, the killing was “legally justified.” Why? Because the video from the deputies’ patrol car dash cameras appears to show Nicolas trying to run from the police and then turn, for the briefest of moments, in the direction of Cpl. Jean while holding a pair of pruning clippers in one hand. That momentary turn was, apparently, all it took to justify Cpl. Jean’s decision to take Nicolas’s life, from the State Attorney’s point of view. That subtle shift of Nicolas’s shoulders, from parallel to Cpl. Jean toward the perpendicular, was, according to the State Attorney, enough to cause reasonable fear and, so, in the eyes of the law, justify Cpl. Jean’s split-second decision to kill Nicolas Morales. But the State Attorney’s decision seems more an assessment born of necessity and stripped bare of context — a purely mechanical, heartless reading of events leading to a pre-determined conclusion — than the considered analysis of a complex tragedy involving multiple decision points, all leading inexorably toward a terrible conclusion, leaving one man dead, his son orphaned, and a community in crisis. One crucial bit of context absent from the State Attorney’s statement: Nicolas Morales’s death was entirely, and indisputably, preventable. It is clear from the video that Cpl. Jean failed to assess Nicolas’s mental state, failed to communicate effectively with Nicolas, and consistently made decisions and took actions that escalated the situation and obviated less lethal means of control, turning an otherwise-possible peaceful resolution into a deadly one. Those multiple failures to assess and deescalate the scene that night put Cpl. Jean and Nicolas on a spiraling collision course that ended, 13 seconds later, in Nicolas’s death. And when the death of one human being at the hands of another is preventable, except for the actions of the killer, then the killing, quite simply, cannot be deemed justifiable. To truly know why Cpl. Jean fired four bullets at Nicolas Morales at close range, just seconds after arriving on the scene, the video demands a more thoroughgoing analysis. Read the CIW’s full analysis on the chain of decisions, actions and reactions by CCSO officers that led inexorably to Nicolas’s preventable death Coalition of Immokalee Workers (239) 657 8311 | [email protected] | www.ciw-online.org Connect with us ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Coalition of Immokalee Workers | 110 S 2nd St, Immokalee, FL 34142 Unsubscribe [email protected] Customer Contact Data Notice Sent by [email protected] powered by Try email marketing for free today!