During Fatal Standoff, Police Asked Facebook To Deactivate Woman’s Account

The 23-year-old mother barricaded herself in her apartment with her five-year-old son earlier in the week during a heated standoff with police during which she brandished a shotgun at officers outside her building. And then the second video shows her talking to her 5 year old son about the police and the structual racism they serve under.

Authorities say officers killed 23-year-old Korryn Gaines on Monday after an exchange of gunfire that also wounded a 5-year-old boy.

Police released documents Tuesday related to their March 10 traffic stop of Gaines in Randallstown that led to the warrant being served Monday. “I do not participate in any of you guys’ side laws… I’m going to kill you”, Johnson quoted Gaines as saying. According to Johnson, Gaines was inside, wielding the shotgun, with her 5-year-old in her arms and a 1-year-old boy and Courtney nearby.

Facebook took action recently when a women chose to share videos of a standoff between her and Baltimore police on the social media site. Somewhere around 3:00 p.m., a police reported that Gaines pointed her weapon directly at one of the tactical police officers.

Chief Jim Johnson said Facebook agreed to suspend Gaines’ social media accounts at their request while negotiations were taking place, according to the Associated Press. “Why? In order to preserve the integrity of the negotiation process with her and for the safety of our personnel [and] her child”. Ms Gaines was posting video of the operation as it unfolded. People who saw the postings, Johnson said, responded by encouraging her to not comply with police.

“The content of Gaines’ account has not been deleted, I want to stress that”.

It took about an hour for the accounts to be deactivated, police said.

Facebook did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

After a short period of time, Facebook (which owns Instagram) complied and deactivated the accounts. Facebook deactivated the stream at the request of the police department. One officer feared for his life and fired two shots.

If it wasn’t for Facebook Live, it’s likely that America wouldn’t have even known the name or fate of Philando Castile in Minnesota, for example. “If they truly felt something was wrong with her, then address her accordingly”, aunt Dawn McGee said. “At that time the phone went dead”.

Following the death of another African-American at the hands of police, anger spilled out on social media pages. “We’re so used to our own scent, we can’t fathom what we bear”.

“It sounds like they were doing what they were trying to do to de-escalate this, and then you have people trying to make it worse”, said Doug Ward, Johns Hopkins School of Public Safety Leadership.

Officials were not sure if the boy was shot by Gaines or the officers. No data was deleted, Johnson said.

And we know that the body count of black women like Gaines who are executed by police and blamed for their own blood will continue to rise as long as we are silent about their pain, cowardly co-signing the lie that they deserved it. They threw me a charge too late, got my “Big Girl” September of previous year. She said a similar thing in another Instagram video. “I’m optimistic that some additional evidence will add clarity to this issue but we don’t know”.

In the videos, Gaines is seen repeatedly telling an officer he doesn’t have the authority to demand her drivers’ license.

Baltimore County police are on the scene Monday of a barricade situation at the Carriage Hill Apartments in Randallstown.

In the past five years, there have been numerous occasions where white people have pointed guns at police officers and have remained alive-and in some instances, have kept their firearms. Approximately 40 officers in the agency have been trained.