We are still dying, hurting and being humiliated.
On both sides of the Atlantic, Black men’s lives are being taken with impunity by police who always seem to have a reason but are repeatedly seeing that reasoning exposed.
The latest victim, on Monday morning, was 25-year-old Jayland Walker – shot 60 times by US police in Ohio during a traffic stop for a minor violation.
How you even shoot someone during a traffic stop 60 times – even if they have a firearm – takes some explaining. Particularly given the fact that the suspect in Sunday’s Copenhagen shooting was taken alive by Danish police.
Last year in Florida, Bryan Riley killed four people, shot at police and attacked another officer – yet was taken alive.
So too Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two men and wounded another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, two years ago.
The list of Black men killed instead of being apprehended, however, is getting longer.
And two years after George Floyd, in the US and here in England, Black lives still appear not to matter.
Take some of the evidence in the litany of cases for which London’s Metropolitan Police was placed into special measures last week.
Including the strip search of Black teenage girl Child Q with the youngster menstruating, the stop and search of champion athlete Bianca Williams. and the stats last year confirming Black people – who make up less than 4% of the UK population – are tasered for longer.
Oladeji Omishore, the latest harrowing example, jumped for his life into the River Thames last month after police deployed such tactics on him.
He later died in hospital. The footage went viral.
Likewise the story of 36-year-old Edwin Afriyie, a Black social worker allegedly tasered by police while standing with his arms folded and posing no threat, body-worn video played in court last week shows.
It would appear to contradict written statements from officers claiming he’d been “steeling himself to attack” them and had adopted a “fighting stance”. Afriyie is suing the force for assault/battery and misfeasance in public office. The police deny liability and say that the force was ‘necessary and reasonable’. The case continues.
The family of Ian Taylor would dearly love him alive to fight his case in court.
Acutely asthmatic, he repeatedly told all-white officers from the Met he could not breathe when he was arrested in June 2019. A May inquest heard – and police body-worn cameras showed – that the 54-year-old was left lying on the street without an inhaler, medical assistance or water – on one of the hottest days of the year.
He died. With seven police officers ignoring his pleas for help. Campaigners want police held accountable.
Instead law enforcement in the capital continues to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Ask 14-year-old De-Shaun Joseph, wrestled to the ground in his school uniform by four officers and left terrified in a case of mistaken identity last week.
He said that officers in Croydon, South London, forced the asthmatic teen up against a wall, handcuffed him and took his phone without explanation. Viral video footage shows officers pinning him to the ground and kneeling on top of him.
The Met later released him, admitting they’d held the wrong person. There are thousands of individuals – and families – across the country who know exactly how the Josephs are feeling right now.
Because such tactics are not getting worse. They are simply being filmed.
