Twelve years old.
Same age as Tamir Rice when he was gunned down by trigger-happy Cleveland cops for holding a toy gun while Black. A little kid. In a park. With a toy gun. That was in 2014, the same year that Eric Garner was killed by a policeman using a chokehold. Garner's "crime"? Selling loosies. That and being insufficiently deferential.
Tayvon Martin was older than Tamir Rice, so he got to enjoy a little bit more of life. But he was only a seventeen-year old high school kid when he was murdered by vigilante George Zimmerman while on his way back home from buying Skittles. That was in 2012.
The next year, a mentally ill dental hygienist was killed because she drove through a checkpoint onto the White House grounds, knocked over a bike rack and the Secret Service guy standing near it, and backed off and led the Feds on a chase to Capitol Hill.
It's entirely possible that they thought Miriam Carey was a threat to the President, and to members of Congress. They may not have seen her 18-month old baby in the back of her car. But maybe 26 shots was an overreaction. Especially when we just witnessed the kid gloves used for the white terrorists who enter the Capitol Building intending to kill Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and others.
Year by year, story by story.
It's so easy to lose track. Especially if you're a comfortable old white lady who has nothing to fear from the police.
In 2015, it was Sandra Bland, pulled over on some bogus pretense while driving in Texas to start a job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M. Bland hung herself in jail, under very cloudy circumstances. Starting with the big question: why was she dragged into jail to begin with? Can you really be arrested for failing to put a cigarette out while you're sitting in your own car if a policeman tells you to? Apparently if you're Black you can. Things just always seem to escalate, don't they?
2015 was also the year of Freddy Gray, who was manhandled by cops in Baltimore and ended up dying of spinal cord injuries. He was being arrested for possession of a knife that was legal to carry under Maryland law, but (maybe) not under Baltimore rules. He was a little guy - 5'8", less than 150 pounds - so I'm guessing he felt safer in a tough neighborhood if he had some protection. Imagine the pain that man suffered, rattling around the back of a police van with a broken back?
And you'll remember Walter Scott? He was the North Carolina man, a forklift operator and Coast Guard veteran, who was shot in the back while fleeing the police. Black, it goes without saying. They'd pulled him over on a traffic stop; turned out he owed child support. So he took off. They knew his name. They knew where he lived. It was child support, not murder. Shot in the back. Killed. That was also 2015.
The most memorable story of 2016 was Philando Castile. A long-time employee of the St. Paul school system - he worked in food services - Castile was shot in his car while explaining to the suburban Minneapolis cops who'd pulled him over that he did have a gun in his car that he was legally entitled to carry. His girlfriend recorded the incident, which was witnessed by her 4-year-old daughter.
In 2017, Dennis Plowden was out of his car and sitting on the ground with his hands showing that they were empty when a Philadelphia policeman shot him point blank in the head. Oh. Plowden was just 25. Training to learn how to rehab houses. His nickname was Nice. Oh.
2018 wasn't a good year for Stephon Clark, a hard-luck kid of 22 from Sacramento. He was in his grandmother's backyard, holding a cell phone, when he was killed. That same year, Botham Jean - a university grad and Price Waterhouse accountant, so impeccable credentials matter not - was standing in his own apartment when he was shot and killed by an off-duty Dallas police officer. Tired, she thought she was in her own apartment - they all kind of looked alike in her complex - and afraid for her life, she shot him down. When the officer first tried to enter Jean's flat, he was sitting on his couch, watching TV, eating ice cream. Vanilla ice cream topped with crumbled cookies.
It was late at night and Texan Atatiana Jefferson, an HR professional with a degree from Xavier University, was playing video games with her nephew when all of a sudden there were people prowling around outside her house. Not identifying themselves. She had no idea who they were, so she picked up her handgun. And was shot through her window by a police man who, in fact, couldn't see that she was holding a gun. Just that she was standing there. Turns out that the police were called for a wellness check when a neighbor say Jefferson's front door open. Maybe the cops should have hollered in through that open door to announce themselves. That was in 2019.
2019 was also it for Elijah McClain of Aurora, Colorado. A massage therapist and self-taught musician who played his violin to soothe animals at his local shelter, McClain had gone out to buy himself an ice tea. He has been described as something of an oddball - likely "on the spectrum" - and didn't understand why all of a sudden the cops were all over him. The chokehold they put him in made him vomit. He apologized for throwing up. Ketamine was administered to calm him down. It killed him.
2020 brought its own horrors.
In February, Ahmaud Arbery, an all-round athlete, was out jogging in Georgia when a crew of vigilantes stopped him. And killed him. Jogging While Black. A new one. (One of the vigilantes, who are being held pre-trial without bail, has just asked to be released because he suffers from high blood pressure. I guess if the QAnon insurrectionist shaman can ask for - and receive - organic food while being held for crimes related to the Capitol Hill attack, this guy's entitled to ask for mercy because he has high blood pressure. But, jeez.)
March brought the shooting of Breonna Taylor of Louisville. Taylor was an EMT/ER technician who was killed in her own apartment, the victim of out of control police officers caught up in a botched drug raid. (Which had nothing to do with her.)
George Floyd's death - he was killed in Minneapolis for maybe/maybe not passing a counterfeit twenty dollar bill - set off a summer of demonstrations and soul-searching. But not enough to do much to save Jacob Blake from being multi-shot while leaning into his car in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The situation is murky. There was a domestic call. Blake was breaking up a fight. What was he leaning into the car for?
Maybe it was to reassure his three kids who were sitting there in the back seat.
Blake was fortunate. He's still alive. Just paralyzed from the waist down.
His shooting set off rioting in Kenosha, during which two (white) protestors were killed by (white boy) Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17 year-old from Illinois who took it upon himself to protect Kenosha. Rittenhouse has been lionized by the far-right and, out on pre-trial bail, has been seen hanging out with Proud Boys and flashing the white-nationalist sign. Amazingly, he did not take part in the January 6th insurrection. Maybe he couldn't get his mom to drive him to DC.
While I do despise vigilantes (George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, et al.), I don't hate all cops. Nor do I buy the mantra ACAB (All Cops Are Bad). But some of them are. And many of them are poorly trained and trigger happy. And in a country where there are more guns than there are people, they do have an understandable fear that everyone they encounter could be armed and dangerous. And Black skin seems to make an awful lot of them see red.
So enough is enough. Make that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Martin Luther King, Jr., paraphrasing 19th century abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, famously wrote that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
We can dream, can't we?
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