Shoot First, Blame the Shooting Victim Later.
October 10, 2022
Savanna Graziano was 15 years old when the police killed her.
She was shot along a roadside in Hesperia, California when she got out of the car her father was driving and ran towards the cops. She was wearing “tactical gear” – described in another report as a “tactical helmet and vest.” (To be clear, law enforcement has not said outright that Savanna was killed by police fire.)
The facts as they appear at this moment are this: On Monday, September 26, Savanna’s father Anthony John Graziano killed her mother in what’s been called a “domestic violence incident” – he picked up her mother near an elementary school, she tried to run, and he killed her. (A cop described the scene thus: “And immediately that's when they started arguing and yelling and domestic violence was occurring.”) Savannah was not in the car at that time.
An Amber Alert was issued for Savanna whom police believed was with her father – who had just shot and killed her mother – and thought was probably kidnapped.
Graziano appears to have been driving around with Savanna through the desert. Someone spotted Graziano’s Nissan Frontier and called the police, according to San Bernardino Sheriff Shannon Dicus. A standoff ensued. According to the police, Graziano was shooting at the cops; they were shooting back. At some point, Graziano’s truck went off the road, and Savanna got out.
Once cops realized they had killed a 15-year-old girl, they went into crisis control. They put out the story that she was wearing “tactical gear.” “That suspect…during the gunfire goes down,” Dicus said in a press conference, implying that she “got in the way of the bullets,” as a reporter said during Q&A. Domestic violence was occurring. People were getting in the way of bullets. Standard stuff.
Police have gone on to claim that she was a “willing participant” in her father’s plan, whatever that was. They say she was living with her father for a few weeks before the killings; perhaps she had moved in with him as part of the acrimonious (to say the least) splitting that was occurring from her mother.
“Did she go willingly?” a cop told the news. “Or was she actually abducted? We haven’t been able to prove that just yet.” Sheriff Dicus said, “Based on the information, evidence suggests that Savanna Graziano was a participant in shooting at our deputies.”
We don’t really know the facts and we can’t analyze the videos, because the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t released them yet. So, I want to be clear that most of the stories are either based on what the police say or rumors. Killing a child too young to drive as she runs from a car with her mother-murdering father in it is a bad look, so the sheriff has an incentive to make the facts fit a scenario in which she was a participant. Because as we all know, in this country you cannot be both a victim and a suspect.
Deputies are trained to “neutralize the threat” immediately – hence all the uproar when the police in Uvalde appeared to wander around and sanitize their hands as an active shooter killed children. But in a case where the threat might also be a victim, the binary breaks down.
All the bluster around “taking down” (e.g. killing) would-be school shooters, whatever their age, appears to be less controversial in the media. I haven’t seen many people question the strategy, even though there must be other strategies to reduce violence by and amongst teenagers. The killing of Savanna Graziano, on the other hand, puts into stark relief the contortions we must make in order to believe that shooting someone is the only answer. Savanna got out of the car and ran toward the deputies.
Did she think they would save her? Was there a choice in her position? And, in an alternate universe, had Savanna killed Graziano, would she have been allowed to go home?
Kids are taught that they should call the police, go to law enforcement, ask for “help.” “See something, say something,” they tell children at school. But, when it comes to the real victims, the people who need help the most, the police are uninterested. Savanna did ask for help. They killed her anyway.
Defund. Abolish
Sickening and heartbreaking. Thank you for amplifying this and for your insight.