The jury could, and did, acknowledge that his death was murder by cop. For that we can be a smidgen glad.
Meanwhile, by way of Samuel Sinyangwe,
Police killed at least 5 people today [Tuesday]. This morning they killed someone in Lakewood, CO. Police killed two people in San Antonio this afternoon. Then they killed someone in Detroit and killed #makhiabryant in Columbus.
It’s been [years] since reporting revealed that just 6% of the police officers in Columbus Ohio were responsible for HALF of the police violence in the city. And yet these officers are still on the force...
#MakiahBryant is the 5th child killed by Columbus police since 2013.
It goes on.
4 comments:
If they've narrowed the problem down there should be some mechanism to weed out any officers identified as truly problematic but doing that seems to be a problem everywhere. Not sure about that knife-wielding girl as heard a black woman officer analyze it and conclude taser might not have done the job to keep the girl from stabbing the other girl.
The police in San Antonio made a traffic stop and were fired upon hit his hand and he fired back. What would you expect him to do?
Joared: absolutely every jurisdiction needs a mechanism to get rid of cops who repeatedly abuse citizens. The discipline systems don't seem to work. In big departments and some whole states, police officers have won such extreme process rights that they pretty much can't be fired. And even when they are let go, they can often be hired by some other (usually smaller) department. We give law enforcement awesome power -- unto life or death! -- but as a society have not built in controls.
Bonnie: when the assumption has to be that everyone might have and use a gun, there will be a lot of shooting. I don't blame police officers individually for being afraid. We've constructed a kind of of OK Corral for them to live in.
And then the structural racism we all live inside kicks in on top of the rest of this ... Everyone (including cops of color) make assumptions about who is dangerous, which may be right or wrong, but which are inevitably racially tinged.
As I read more about the Ma'Khia Bryant killing, I realize that there would be more chance of everyone taking a more measured look at the circumstances, if the Columbus police department hadn't lost the confidence of much of their community over many years and incidents. And that lost confidence probably made it more likely that the officer involved would resort first and foremost to deadly force -- that beside the reality that Black people are killable in the USofA.
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