Florida deputies shoot black man in his own yard over ‘rusty pocket knife’
A black Pompano Beach resident was shot and killed by Florida sheriff’s deputies on Friday night all because he refused to put down a rusty old pocket knife.
Gregory Frazier, 52, was shot by white deputies after a domestic altercation at a backyard barbecue.
It was his sister, Deborah Frazier, who called police because her brother was arguing with a different family member, and she felt the situation was getting too heated. When police arrived, the victim was sitting in his back yard eating with the rusty knife in his hand.
Frazier was asked by the deputies to put down the knife, and when he did not comply, they shot and killed him.
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According to Deborah Frazier, her brother had been fighting with her daughter.
“They had a little fight,” Frazier stated. “My brother was a little upset. And I was a little scared. So I called the police, you know, hoping that they would talk to my brother and constrain him. I didn’t think that the altercation would cause death.”
She feels that the deputies acted with excessive force.
“Yes, he had a pocket knife. A rusty pocket knife,” she stated. “I believe those three cops could have sat down, talked to him, used tasers, anything, to constrain him.”
The BSO spokesman Scott Israel had this to say: “He was armed with a knife. A confrontation happened and both deputies fired shots. The subject, tragically, was pronounced deceased on the scene.”
The two deputies in question have been put on administrative leave while the incident is investigated.
