When Christopher Harris stood before worshippers at his Memphis, Tennessee, church this week, he directly confronted the pain being felt by his community.
WARNING: Readers might find some details in this story distressing.
He's around the same age as Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man whose fatal beating by police officers was recently broadcast to the world.
"I'll be honest, when I saw the video, I had to sit down, turn my phone off, and ask why," Mr Harris told the congregation at the Christ Missionary Baptist Church.
"Anger, frustration, asking 'what is the point?'
"What is the point of going on when I have to have the fear of thinking, I will not make it home?"
Mr Nichols's death has shone a spotlight on a now disbanded special policing unit in Memphis and raised broader concerns about excessive use of force by police across the United States.
Many are now questioning what, if anything, has changed since other high-profile cases of police brutality that each time left the nation demanding action.
'When does it stop?': The search for answers in the face of brutality
Tyre Nichols has been remembered as a father, an avid skateboarder and a keen photographer.
His family says he was on his way home from photographing the sunset when he was pulled over by Memphis police on January 7.
The recently released footage from body cameras worn by the police officers contradicts the department's previous account of the incident, which had painted Mr Nichols as uncooperative.
The videos show officers pulling him from his car and tasering him before he manages to get away.
When officers catch up with him, he is punched, kicked and hit with a baton, despite never appearing to strike back.
At one point Mr Nichols can be heard screaming for his mother, who was at home at the time, just blocks away.
He is eventually left slumped up against a police car.
An ambulance arrived about 20 minutes after Mr Nichols was taken into custody, but he died in hospital several days later.
Five former police officers, all of whom are black men, have been charged with second degree murder.
Two other officers have been suspended and three medical personnel have been fired.
At the suburban street corner where Mr Nichols was arrested, locals have stopped to lay flowers and to try to piece together what happened.
"I don't know why they even pulled him over. That's my question today, you know, is why?" said nearby resident Mark Taylor.
"It could have been me. It could have been my kids. It could have been anybody.
"But that young man didn't deserve to die like that."
Lakeisha Tate was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this time last year and visited the site where George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer in 2020.
The makeshift memorial dedicated to Mr Nichols is a few minutes' drive from her home.
"Once again, just like George Floyd, this young man was calling for his mum," she said.
"It's just senseless. My question is, why? When does it stop?
"Will it ever stop?"
The troubled history of America's elite crime-fighting units
The five officers charged over Mr Nichols's death were part of a specialised policing unit known as Scorpion, which stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.
Scorpion was comprised of several teams of officers, often sent out in unmarked cars to patrol areas of Memphis with high rates of violent crime.
Some residents who had previously witnessed the unit in action say they already held concerns about how it operated.
"[The unit] came with a sting and the sting surprised us all to see this unfold," local woman Kiara Hill said.
"It's who can I bully? It's who can I take my anger out on?
"I don't think that it meant any kind of good at all for the community."
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn "CJ" Davis initially resisted calls for Scorpion to be shut down, arguing it had successfully reduced the number of assaults and homicides in the city.
But her department later announced it was permanently deactivating the unit in response to growing public criticism, including from Mr Nichols's family.
"While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonour on the title Scorpion, it is imperative that we … take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted," the Memphis Police Department said in a statement.
It's not the first time a specialised police team has been disbanded due to misconduct concerns.
In the 1970s, an undercover unit in Detroit, Michigan, known as Stress (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) was abolished after being accused of targeting black members of the community.
And in the late 1990s, a Los Angeles Police Department unit called Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, or Crash, came under scrutiny after dozens of officers were found to have planted guns and drug evidence, sold narcotics and used excessive force.
The lawyer for Mr Nichols's parents, Benjamin Crump, has welcomed the decision to shutter Scorpion but wants other police departments to take notice.
"These types of aggressive units are used in cities across the country and are intended to flood troubled areas with officers to stem high crime," he said.
"But what we've seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behaviour of these units can morph into 'wolf pack' misconduct that takes away a person's liberty or freedom to move."
A community left reeling amid calls for police reform
The video of Tyre Nichols's beating has been compared to that of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King in 1991.
The acquittal of the accused police officers in that case sparked deadly riots in LA, while George Floyd's death decades later prompted violent protests.
But Mr Nichols's mother, RowVaughn Wells, has repeatedly called for calm, telling CNN she does not feel hate towards the officers accused of killing her son.
"They have brought shame to their own families. They've brought shame to the black community," she said.
"I feel sorry for them, I really do."
Mr Crump argues Mr Nichols's treatment speaks to what he describes as "institutionalised police culture".
"It is not the race of the police officer that is the determinant factor whether they're going to engage in excessive use of force, but it is the race of the citizen," he the US broadcaster ABC.
"And oftentimes, it's the black and brown citizens that bear the brunt of the brutality.
"It doesn't matter if the officers are black, Hispanic, or white, it's part of the culture, this biased culture that said this is allowed."
The pastor at Christ Missionary Baptist Church, Reverend Gina Stewart, is also on the national board of the civil rights organisation, NAACP.
She believes Mr Nichols's death should be seen as a "wake-up call" on the need for police reform.
"It's unfortunate that it had to happen this way, just like it was unfortunate that we had to watch George Floyd lay on the pavement with the police officer's knee on his neck.
"The tragedy, though, is that after the world saw it, nothing happened. We returned to business as usual.
"And what we are saying, is we who believe in freedom, will not rest until it comes."
