At what point do we as a society look in the mirror and realize that progress isn’t inevitable? At what point do we realize that direct actions are needed to bring about real, lasting change for all Americans brutalized by our criminal justice/law enforcement systems? Immediately, we can only hope…
Over the past 18 months, nearly 2,000 people have been killed by American police. Several thousand more men and women have died in jails and prisons across the country during that time. In all, every single day in the United States, three people are killed by police before they ever get to a jail and at least eight die in jail.
Of those 11 people who die per day in some form of police custody, most of us never hear or learn the name of a single one of them. Every few months, a story breaks out and completely grips us, and we learn the names and faces of men and women like Sandra Bland or Freddie Gray or Tamir Rice, but on most days, while the deaths pile up, the stories behind them slip through the cracks of newsworthiness and never really get told.
In fact, the average American would likely struggle to name even a single victim of police brutality from the past few months. While I absolutely think our ability to tolerate the constant death has worn on all of us, I also think the sheer volume of injustice in America has made it nearly impossible for us to keep up.
