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When Cops Shoot to Kill, Blackness Is The Deadly Incentive
It’s abundantly clear that the fundamentals of police brutality is regulated to the direness of being unarmed and Black.
Eric Garner who was murdered by the strong chokehold of lawless cops wasn’t wielding a gun. And Chinedu Okobi wasn’t brandishing a weapon when he was callously killed by a Taser, that was illegally turned it into a lethal weapon — aimed at the chest of a helpless man with mental illness.
This year ends with another roster of Black bodies that were fallen by the bullets of police officers who have been instructed to “shoot first, ask later” when dealing with Black men. And if they don’t use a gun, a Taser and produce the same results if you hit Black bodies enough times to warrant cardiac arrest.
Botham Jean was murdered in his own damn apartment, by an off-duty cop, who happened to be a White woman. She was just recently charged for her crime, months after fatefully entering a space that she claimed was her own. She fired shots at the chest of the Black guy who supposedly “broke” into the unit that she swore was under her name. We still have no solid idea how and why she ended up in the wrong apartment, and why she pulled the trigger on an innocent resident who didn’t pose a threat, other than the fact that he was Black.