Captain Bo Matthews trying to explain what happened at a press conference on Wednesday September 21, 2017.

Sixty seconds. That seems to be an average amount of time that police officers give a situation before fatally shooting people of color. Philando Castile was shot 64 seconds from the time he and his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, were stopped by Jeronimo Yanez. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule—especially when it comes to children. Seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was shot about nine seconds from the time police surrounded the house she was in, attempting to do a raid to serve an arrest warrant. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot within two seconds of officers approaching him in the park in which he was playing with a pellet gun by himself. But the sixty second rule stood again last night as a police officer in Oklahoma City shot a deaf man—despite repeated cries from neighbors and family members that the man was hearing impaired.

The man, Madgiel Sanchez, was shot around 8:15 p.m. outside his home soon after the police responded there to investigate a hit-and-run accident. The first officer to arrive called for backup, pulled out his Taser and ordered Mr. Sanchez, 35, who was on his front porch, to drop the two-foot-long pipe he was clutching, the police said. The officer’s commands did not register with Mr. Sanchez. He ambled off the porch toward the officer, waving the pipe in his right hand, according to the police and a witness. [...] “Don’t kill him, he’s deaf,” his daughter yelled. “Don’t do it!” About six other neighbors joined in, frantically trying to get the officer’s attention. But less than a minute after the episode began, a second officer arrived and immediately pulled out his handgun, [Mr. Rayos, a neighbor said]. While people continued to scream, the first officer fired his Taser at Mr. Sanchez, while the second fired his handgun, the police said.

Both the police and witnesses claim that Sanchez “ambled” toward officers. To amble means to walk at a slow or leisurely pace. This means that Sanchez wasn’t charging at the officers. Hell, he wasn’t even walking briskly toward them. Surely, two officers—one equipped with a taser, the other with a gun, could have come up with some other alternative to fatally shooting this man. Especially as seven people are shouting at you that the man cannot hear. But remember, sixty seconds—that’s all cops seem to need when it comes to taking the lives of people of color. Multiple shots fired and a man dead, all in response to a hit-and-run call.