25-year-old Bijan "Bij" Ghaisar

By all accounts, Bijan C. Ghaisar was a beautiful young man. The 25-year-old accountant loved Tom Brady, Muhammad Ali, and Pink Floyd, and he hated guns.

Bijan C. Ghaisar had a passion for football, for liberal politics, for chicken wings and chocolate. He had embraced Buddhism in the last year of his life, and the only conflict in his world came in his strident Facebook discussions.

Bijan — “Bij” to his loved ones — had a loving, supporting family and many, many friends. He had studiously stayed on the straight and narrow, managing to get through his teens and into his twenties without once running afoul of the law. As his mom puts it,

“This kid worked hard. That’s why I’m so mad,” said his mother, Kelly Ghaisar of McLean, Virginia. “All the Christmas holidays, he used to study. He studied abroad. He didn’t take anything lightly. He worked hard. This is what kills me, that this life should have ended this senselessly. He worked hard for everything.”

On November 17, 2017, Bij had his first...and last...encounter with those who swore to serve and protect him and he wouldn’t live to talk about it.

The day for Bij started out as so many others had before: spending time with his mother, checking in at his job, making plans with his dad, and just going about his business as is his right to do. His plan was to meet up with his parents for dinner later that evening. A dinner for which his parents would be waiting in vain for him to show up because that night, Bijan Ghaisar would become one of the 1188 people killed by police in 2017.

What exactly happened to Bijan?

x For months we've been demanding to see this video.



Police executed 25 y/o Bijan Ghaisar, an accountant.



He was unarmed & non-violent.



He drove away from a very minor car accident in which he was the victim.



Police then chased him down, pulled him over, and shot him 9 times pic.twitter.com/FUUAhIMOuN Ã¢ÂÂ Shaun King (@ShaunKing) January 25, 2018

It took over two months for Bijan’s parents to get an idea of what happened to their child and what they found out is enraging, heartbreaking and sickening.

“Bijan Ghaisar was repeatedly threatened by over-aggressive and out-of-control law enforcement officers, after he drove away from a minor traffic incident in which he was the victim and in which there was little property damage and no known injuries,” Austin said in a Wednesday statement. “No one was even close to being in harm’s way until a pair of U.S. Park Police officers repeatedly shot Bijan at close range as he sat, unarmed, in his Jeep on a residential street.

A minor accident, Bijan is the victim, he drives away, he’s pursued, he stops, the cops approach him with guns drawn, he drives away likely scared out of his wits by the sight of guns pointed at him. They shot at him nine times! Five of the bullets found their target hitting Bijan four times in the head and once in the wrist. He died 10 days later, leaving behind his grieving parents and a sister.

Why?????!!!!

Why? Why shoot at an unarmed man? What crime did he commit that he had to pay with his life? He had stopped; why not pull back, call for backup, use the bullhorn to reassure him, and wait? What’s wrong with waiting?

Since the young accountant was shot in November of 2017, another 213 have been killed by police; 93 of them in the last 25 days. This is carnage. Years of unnecessary killing, of weeping and mourning, and still no formal acknowledgment of the problem much less a systemic approach to fixing what is obviously broken.

We need the Michael Brown Federal Over-Policed Rights Act (MBOPRA). We need to make our police force into a sophisticated, empathic, patient entity. We need well-trained professionals who will take the time to think before pulling their guns. We need to stop the killing.

Rest in peace, Bij. #JusticeForBijan