Demand justice for those hurt and killed by police. Stop creating more victims.
The shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man, by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday was excessive, unnecessary use of deadly force. Video of the incident is graphic and infuriating. After responding to what the police described as a „domestic incident,“ one of the cops grabs Blake’s shirt from behind and proceeds to fire into him seven times at point-blank range. Blake somehow managed to survive the attempted murder, but his father has told media outlets that Blake has been paralyzed from the waist down. At least two of the cops involved in the incident—including the officer who emptied his clip into the back of an unarmed and nonviolent suspect—have been placed on leave. The officers involved should lose their jobs. The cop who pulled the trigger—then pulled it again, and again, and again—should be charged with the same offenses that any other civilian who fired a weapon that many times into someone else’s back would face, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. That is what justice demands. But for many who see the video of Blake’s shooting, that kind of justice is insufficient. The public outrage has evolved past seeking individual remedies for these not-so-isolated incidents. The use of unnecessary and life-altering force against Jacob Blake reminds us of the equally unnecessary and violent deaths of Eric Garner, George Floyd, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, and many others. Discrete justice does not address the systemic problems that plague policing in America. And thanks to qualified immunity—the court-created legal doctrine that often shields police officers from accountability when they hurt, maim, or kill—even discrete justice is often denied.
