America's Domestic Murder Machine Rolls On
Police are capable of taking in White mass-murderers alive, but immediately kill Black & Brown children
I began jotting notes down yesterday for a column on 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant being killed by the Columbus, Ohio Police Department before I even knew her name. I didn’t wait for the perpetrators of this extra-judicial state killing to get their story together before beginning to plan an essay because, well, as we discussed earlier today Police lie.
Police especially lie after they kill. So, there’s never any need for journalists to prioritize the state’s claims and talking points.
When I began outlining this column the Mayor of Columbus had already released statements doing the typical thing that the state does after it has inflicted lethal violence on a Black or Brown child – namely lie and call the victim an adult and refer to their killing as a passive thing.
He called her a woman who “lost her life.” Ma’Khia wasn’t a woman, she was a child, and she didn’t “lose” her life, it was taken from her by police.
I began working on this column as I watched video taken of White Columbus Police officers on the scene after their colleague had killed Ma’Khia taunt Black neighbors by shouting “Blue Lives Matter!”
Few things demonstrate that American policing cannot be reformed like watching Police officers angrily declare themselves victims after they kill a child. As police reject reform, decade after decade, they leave us with abolition as our only option.
Then, body camera footage from the officer who killed Ma’Khia was released last night. I watched it at full-speed and in slow-motion, repeatedly.
There are reportedly civilians on the ground who knew Ma’Khia and the violent situation that surrounded the child which led to police being called in the first place and who say she was defending herself with a knife from others who were bullying her.
In the footage it certainly looked like there were those on the scene who supported her efforts and tried to help her take on the people we see her fighting with as she held a blade of some type in her hand. For the sake of argument, however, let’s say that Ma’Khia wasn’t merely a kid arming herself to fight with people who antagonized her or possibly even threatened her well-being.
Let us perhaps even see her as a crazed terrorist who picked up a knife for no legitimate reason and was intent on hurting others with it. Those rare situations happen and in modern times we often see many of them captured on video.
In that hypothetical situation, police encounter Ma’Khia fighting others with a knife, with some others on scene appearing to help her and still others standing away from her. Police don’t know who the aggressor in the situation is, so they don’t understand the situation well at all.
They just see a child acting out with a blade, attempting to hurt others. Within moments police decide to shoot that child four times, killing Ma’Khia Bryant.
Okay.
So, did police act appropriately? Did they do all they could to de-escalate a situation where children were fighting, or did they immediately escalate the violence infinitely with their firearms and without any attempt at disarming or apprehending any suspects?
Somehow, despite police successfully taking in armed light-skinned mass-murdering active male shooter after armed light-skinned mass murdering active male shooter alive and into custody to stand trial, yesterday they felt that they needed to jettison all efforts except for immediately shooting and killing Ma’Khia, a child of 16.
Police decided that pumping a child full of bullets within moments of encountering her was the only or best option for them with Ma’Khia and her knife. They evidently did not think that interceding with their superior numbers and range of superior physical attributes and tools at their disposal to apprehend the child was an option.
Police came upon a scene answering a call and believed that they were seeing a crime being committed on a sidewalk and their reaction was to execute the suspected perpetrator on the spot.
There was no attempt at arresting Ma’Khia. There was no attempt from the multiple adult officers who were equipped with sophisticated and varied weaponry at disarming the child of her knife.
There was no manifested concern from police that the bullets they fired at Ma’Khia might go an inch in a different direction than intended and hit the girl in pink they say they were trying to protect, or through Ma’Khia and into the girl in pink who stood bracing herself right in front of her.
To police, the child Ma’Khia Bryant brought a knife to their gunfight, and they killed her without hesitation. Police escalated the violence without pause and another Black child is dead at the hands of our increasingly funded, armed, and militarized police departments.
Police encountered Kyle Rittenhouse armed with a semi-automatic rifle during a full-blown riot where he’d already killed multiple people, and they didn’t think he could possibly be a threat to them or anyone else. Police gave him water, encouraged him, and sent him on his way to shoot and kill more.
White Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t who Police were looking for. He didn’t fit the description.
Police were there to go after Black people, not a good kid like Kyle. When Kyle was finally arrested, police groups organized to donate to his legal defense fund.
Police did not see Kyle as a threat when they saw him shouldering major firepower during a riot, and they don’t see him as a threat now after they learned he killed several people with his guns. In our police state, actions themselves aren’t crimes unless they’re attached to the people we as a racist society have deemed dangerous.
Some people are born dangerous, according to our carceral state. Others are born and remain non-threatening forever, regardless of how many they hurt or kill.
Police encountered Dylann Roof, an armed young White man, after he’d murdered nine Black churchgoers. They somehow managed to disarm and gently take him into custody alive so he could be charged and stand trial.
Kyle Rittenhouse and others have killed many people with firearms but when police encountered them afterwards, with them still armed, they managed to not execute them in the street. They’re White.
Ma’Khia was Black.
Jeremy Christian murdered two people and injured a third after he was confronted for shouting racist taunts at Black girls. When police encountered Christian after his murders (video below), he still had the knife in hand and shouted angrily at them.
Yet, somehow, police managed to disarm the White man and take him safely into custody to be charged and face trial. Time and again police manage to take armed, White mass-murderers into custody safely so that we can be what we claim to be – a nation ruled by laws and equitable legal proceedings where people face charges in trials.
Time and time again police manage to deem unarmed or relatively lightly armed Black and Brown children as larger threats than armed, mass-murdering White men, and gun them down in the streets instead of arresting them and bringing them to trial. Police aren’t supposed to “protect” us from “dangerous” people by executing them on the streets without charge or trial, but that’s what they do all too often with Black and Brown people, many of them children like Ma’Khia Bryant of Columbus and Adam Toledo of Chicago.
The Columbus, Ohio Police Department has killed more children since 2013 than any other police department except for Chicago’s, which killed the unarmed and 13-year-old Toledo.
Only 28% of Columbus’ population is Black, yet of those killed by their police department, 83% of victims are Black.
Derek Chauvin was surprisingly convicted yesterday of all three counts against him for murdering George Floyd in cold blood. Fine.
He certainly deserves those convictions. Let’s see what happens in sentencing and probation/parole.
Still, on the day that merely one of George Floyd’s badge-wearing murderers was convicted in Minnesota another Midwest police department killed a child, Ma’Khia Bryant. Columbus’ police did that just days after video of Chicago’s police gunning down yet another child, Adam Toledo, was released.
The murderous American policing system rolls on, unabated, undeterred, and as lethal to the people it is sworn to protect as ever. Breathe sighs of relief at your own peril.
Mid stabbing then shot her I’d like to see you stop that .. so the other girl should take the stab??