Jonathan Aledda, the grossly incompetent North Miami SWAT cop who shot the unarmed caregiver of an autistic man holding a toy truck, has finally been charged for an absurd shooting that never should have taken place.

A Florida police officer who shot an autistic man’s caretaker was charged Wednesday with attempted manslaughter, authorities said.

North Miami Police Officer Jonathan Aledda was also charged with misdemeanor culpable negligence, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said in a news release. Aledda had been on administrative leave since last summer’s shooting.

The Miami Herald (https://goo.gl/TKp8Qh ) reports that this is the first time prosecutors under Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle have charged a police officer for an on-duty shooting.

Officers on the scene heard caregiver Charles Kinsey tell them that his charge, Rinaldo, was an autistic man holding a toy truck. North Miami’s police chief confirmed that officer’s knew that Rinaldo was holding a toy truck. Aledda opened fire anyway, and then when he shot Kinsey instead of Rinaldo, Aledda told Kinsey “he didn’t know” why he shot his weapon.

Three. Freaking. Times.

North Miami’s police chief has exposed rampant corruption, incompetence, and an attempted cover-up of the shooting, and he’s disgusted by the state of the department he was hired to run just one week before the shooting.

Disgustingly but predictably, the slimy head of the Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association, John Rivera, continues to defend this inexcusable shooting.

North Miami’s police union continued to defend Aledda on Wednesday.

“In this case, we’re going to be able to show how politically motivated, vindictive and incompetent … the state attorney is,” the Herald quoted John Rivera, president of the Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association, as saying. “The law is a very simple thing – intent. They’re never going to be able to prove that this guy acted maliciously or recklessly in any way.”

Do you know why a lot of otherwise good people have a problem with police officers, Mr. Rivera? It’s because of the so-called “blue wall of silence,” where officers and departments and PBAs put up a united front to protect even the most obviously incompetent and criminal behavior by officers.

Aledda shot his weapon three times at an autistic man that other officers and Charles Kinsey had told him was unarmed. Thankfully, he was as poorly trained as the rest of North Miami’s Police Department, and missed the man he intended to murder with all three shots. Unfortunately, Aledda was so incompetent in every way, shape, and form, that he’d taken such a piss-poor angle that put Charles Kinsey directly in the line of fire, and Mr. Kinsey took a round.

There’s simply no plausible way to excuse Aledda’s behavior. This was bad shooting during a bad shoot. Aledda should never wear a badge again, nor should anyone on the force who attempted to help cover up this shooting.

I sincerely hope that North Miami Police Chief Gary Eugene can turn the department around. The North Miami Police Department has a serious credibility problem, and an obvious competency problem that neither the underlings in the department nor the city itself seem to want to address.