These are the unarmed black victims of police brutality.
The Washington Post keeps track of all the victims of police shootings. Let’s look at some of the tragedies of the last 3 years.
In 2017, Police shot and killed 223 black men.
Most of the victims were armed. 131 had a gun. 35 had a knife. 21 were unarmed.
Many of the victims were fleeing the scene of the crime, on foot or by car.
Let’s focus on the most brutal cases, where police killed an unarmed victim who was not fleeing the scene of a crime.
There were 9 unarmed people who were shot.
The first name on the list is Jean Pedro Pierre. You can watch the video of the encounter here:
In short, Jean punches one cop, gets tased, keeps fighting, drags the cop around by his feet for about a minute, charges towards a second cop, then gets shot.
The second is Brian Easley, who took hostages in a bank:
The 3rd is Dejuan Guillory. This one’s not that clear, it sounds like he got in a verbal and then physical altercation with a cop, then walked away, then the cop got him on the ground and shot him. At some point, Dejuan’s girlfriend jumped on the cop’s back and bit his neck. This one’s totally not obvious to me, the victim was needlessly aggressive, but it could also be that the cop lost his temper and murdered Dejuan, in which case the cop should definitely be in jail.
4th is Marc Brandon Davis. Cops were responding to a traffic accident. Davis was one of the drivers. There was an altercation between him and an officer. The officer shot Davis. I can’t find enough information to understand what happened or why.
5th is Ricco Devante Holden. Sounds like he was drunk, got in a fight with a cop, got tased, fought his way into a police car, and then got shot. He had a lengthy criminal record:
6th is Jordan Edwards, a 15 year old victim. You can watch the video here:
It’s kind of chaotic — the cops are breaking up a party, someone starts firing gunshots outside, people are fleeing, one driver ignores multiple police demands to stop, one officer shoots. The cop says that he was worried that the car would hit him or his partner. It looks to me like he made the wrong call. The officer got a 15 year sentence for the shooting.
7th is Alteria Woods, a 21 year old pregnant woman hit in the crossfire during a SWAT raid. Cops claim that her boyfriend used her as a human shield. There are not a lot of other details available:
8th is Nana Adomako, who went into a verizon store, grabbed a phone from an employee, hit him, and threatened to kill him. The officer found Nana outside, got into a fight with him, couldn’t win the fight even with the help of his police dog, and shot the suspect:
9th is Darrion Barnhill. Officers approached him after being called for someone beating on a door, they found he had multiple outstanding warrants for assault (and his girlfriend had filed for protection from him). He assaulted the officers, threw one on the ground. Officers tazed him and shot him, it’s not clear whether they could have simply tazed him.
These are just the unarmed victims of 2017.
Maybe I just picked a bad year?
In 2019, the number of similar victims (unarmed, not fleeing from a crime) dropped to 4.
We have Atatiana Jefferson, who died from some very bad police work, the cop acted like a prowler outside her house. She pointed a gun out her window, the cop announced himself but then quickly shot her through the window:
We also have Channara Tom Pheap, who assaulted a cop. He choked the cop, grabbed the cop’s taser, and used it on him:
We have Melvin Watkins, who came to a party, had a few drinks and got into a fight. Other partygoers called the cops, hoping they could escort him away. For unclear reasons, the officer shot him instead. The cop claims that Melvin was driving quickly at him but there’s no video. So, Melvin was driving drunk towards a cop, but the cop probably still used too much force:
And we have Kevin Bruce Mason, who threatened to kill a cop and later got shot. He’d shot a cop earlier in his life.
When we talk about lots of unarmed black victims, murdered by police, it’s rare. It’s generally armed criminals or people that are assaulting cops. It is sometimes cops that have lost control of a violent situation, after having already tried using a taser.
It’s not usually George Floyd or Philando Castile or the other, most tragic events you see on the news. These tragedies do happen. A few innocent black men are killed by the police, every year. But it’s incredibly rare — the odds that an innocent black man will be murdered by cops are about 1 in 10 million, about the same as the odds that he’ll be struck by lightning.
The average black man killed by police is armed with a gun, fleeing the scene of a crime, or assaulting an officer.
Are you surprised by this? Does this sound different than the news you read?
As riots begin to sweep the nation, NPR writes about police brutality.
NPR gives some examples of how black people have died:
We wanted to learn more about each person’s final moments before the police ended their lives. Here’s some of what we learned:
Eric Garner had just broken up a fight, according to witness testimony.
Walter Scott was going to an auto-parts store.
Philando Castile was driving home from dinner with his girlfriend.
Eric Reason was pulling into a parking spot at a local chicken and fish shop.
Dominique Clayton was sleeping in her bed.
Breonna Taylor was also asleep in her bed.
I recognized some of the names. Eric Garner. Philando Castile. Breonna Taylor.
And I didn’t recognize some of the other names.
NPR writes:
“Eric Reason was pulling into a parking spot at a local chicken and fish shop.”
You can watch the video of what happened:
Eric Reason and an off duty cop got in a fight over a parking spot. Eric went to his car, got a gun and shows it to the cop, threatening him. The cop got his own gun out and killed the man. The cop shot him as he was running away. A fucked up incident in many ways! Also, both men are black!
Or, NPR says:
“Dominique Clayton was sleeping in her bed.”
That sounds horrible. A cop murdered a woman sleeping in her own bed. Why would a cop do that? Google the name:
The cop was having an affair with the murdered woman. But he didn’t want his wife to find out. NPR is billing it as racist police brutality, when it’s a love affair between a white man and a black woman. He’d bought her a car and was buying her a house. I don’t know what to call it. A tragedy? Domestic violence? Not police brutality. It appears that he’s still under trial for her murder.
A lot of the cases are ambiguous. Walter Scott got stopped in traffic, ran from a cop, got in a fight, got tased, kept running. Cop shot him in the back. Pretty awful, sounds like incorrect police behavior. But NPR only reports that Scott was driving to the store.
NPR gives the impression that if you’re black, you’re not even safe in your own bed. You can’t even pull into a parking lot safely.
The reality is that you’re safe, as long as you do not wave a gun at cops or assault them. Do not point a gun at an officer. Do not punch him. Do not drag him around like a toy.
The Washington Post’s shootings tracker says that several black men get killed each year holding a “toy weapon”. Here’s a sample case from last year:
The victim, Stephen Murray, held a woman captive for 24 hours. Murray had warrants for auto theft and weapons violations.
When cops tried to arrest Muray, he held a gun on the woman and put her between himself and the deputies. The cops shot him. The gun was later determined to be a replica. Washington Post categorizes this as “man with toy weapon killed by cops”.
Getting the picture yet? The police aren’t terrible, the reporters are.
The number of unarmed police shooting victims has declined since 2015:
The number of complete tragedies, of unarmed people killed when they are not, say, assaulting an officer, is lower still. If NPR is padding their list of names, you can tell there really aren’t that many cases.
The news publicizes the shit out of the worst events, because that’s what gets clicks. And it has consequences. The riots right now are one consequence. And people are dying.
As of June 8, 2020, twenty two deaths have been confirmed during the George Floyd demonstrations.
In today’s social media dystopia, you can watch the people dying. Here’s a disturbing video of one black man who was killed by looters.
And violence has generally risen in some cities. In Chicago, shootings soared over the first weekend of riots, 92 people were shot, 27 were killed:
Also, if you’ve forgotten, we’re still in the middle of a pandemic. People of color have been disproportionately represented among the 100,000 Americans that have died so far. We’ll have to wait and see how much these mass gatherings accelerate the spread of the virus. One epidemiologist estimates that each day of protesting will ultimately kill between 50 and 500 people.
The sad reality in all this is that blacks in America really are struggling. Police brutality is only one of their worries. Black people are unemployed and impoverished at high rates. Many live in violent communities. The murder rate in Black America is 6 times what it is in White America. About 8,000 black lives are lost to murder every year, mostly young black men in big cities shooting each other.
And the murder rate has gone up, as of late. After 2 decades of declining, America’s murder rate went up in 2015 and 2016:
Some people think the increase in murders is because of less policing that started after the Ferguson protests. Others say that it’s because black people are afraid to call the police, because they think that the police will murder them, now more than ever.
Regardless of the cause, black people need safer communities.
This is not a struggle between good guys (BLM, antifa, white liberals) and bad guys (cops, Republicans, the alt right). But I see people on Facebook saying that, every day.
This is a very complicated discussion about how to make black neighborhoods safer, how to reduce criminal behavior in black neighborhoods, how to help with poverty, how to help with mental health, how to improve policing, and how to punish officers that do misbehave.
Let me be clear. Violent protests will not help black communities. People have lost lives. They have lost apartment buildings that have been burned down. They have lost the stores they need to shop at and work at.
This will trigger even more white flight to the suburbs, leaving poorly funded, segregated schools, and less jobs and opportunities for the people left behind.
And this will likely empower the Republicans. If the Democratic mayors and governors can’t provide law and order, voters will turn to the alternative.
I don’t have the answers to fixing our world. I think this event is ultimately driven by high unemployment and inequality. It’s driven by tribalism and dehumanizing the other side. I think police brutality is just the catalyst. Once this is over, I think we’ll have to work on improving all of these things. But, at the moment, all I can say is:
Stop the fucking riots.
Better yet, stop forming huge crowds during the middle of a pandemic. You’re going to get people killed.
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