2012: Say their Names

2000-2023: A "Color-Blind" Nation
Written By Stephanie Brizee

Big Idea

A number of African American deaths caused by vigilantes and police highlighted the deep racism in American society and law enforcement.

What’s important to know?

  1. Disproportionate Arrests, Killings, and Excessive Force: Anti-Black practices in American criminology, rooted in eugenics and racist distrust, continue to produce disproportionate arrests, killings, and excessive use of police force in Black communities.

  2. Say Their Names: The death of three African Americans in three different cities across the United States by law enforcement and vigilante White people raised public awareness of the ongoing threat that Black communities faced due to racist ideas.

1: Disproportionate Arrests, Killings, and Excessive Force

Bonilla-Silva (2018) notes, “a record number of black people were killed by law enforcement in 2015, more than the deadliest year of lynching in the United States” (p. 34). The anti-Black practices enshrined in American criminology through eugenics, the historically entrenched influence of Hoffman’s “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro” (1896), and underlying attitudes and ideologies of distrust towards Black people have continued to produce disproportionate arrests, killings, and use of excessive force in African American communities. 

Research indicates that Blacks charged with murder of a white individual have a much higher chance of receiving the death sentence than any other race-on-race equation (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 38). Statistics are similar in cases of rape. African Americans charged with raping a white woman are more likely to be sentenced to death than cases of white-on-white rape (p. 38). Even beyond sentencing disparities, Black people face higher arrest rates than White people: 

[F]or virtually every type of crime, African-American criminals are arrested at rates above their commission of the acts. For example, victimization reports indicated that 33 percent of women who were raped said that their attacker was black; however, black rape suspects made up fully 43 percent of those arrested. The disproportionate arrest rate adds to the public perception that rape is a “black crime.” (p. 39). 

Across the criminal justice system and in the court of public opinion, Black people are routinely seen as “suspicious” and deemed more likely to commit a crime.

The attitudes from the street cop to the judge to the public reinforce a racist message that keeps America locked in a debilitating cycle of incarceration for people of color. As a result, the United States boasts the largest prison system on the planet, which is shocking considering the prison systems used in China and Russia punish political dissidents. Further, as Hinton (2016) notes, “the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population but holds 25 percent of its prisoners” (p. 5). African Americans and Latinos make up 59 percent of the United States’ prison inmates. Together they represent roughly 25 percent of its population (p. 5).

2: Say Their Names

The murder of three African Americans in three different cities across the United States by law enforcement and vigilante White people raised public awareness of the ongoing threat that Black communities faced due to racist ideas.

Trayvon Martin

In February of 2012, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old African American teen was shot and killed by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman. During the early evening of February 26, Trayvon walked from his father’s fiancée’s townhouse to the nearby 7-Eleven where he purchased a bag of skittles and an Arizona iced tea. On his return walk, he encountered George Zimmerman. Seeing the young Black teen in a dark gray hoodie, Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his truck and called the police reporting that the teen looked “real suspicious” and erroneously claimed on the phone call a connection to recent thefts and loitering within the neighborhood. 

Image of Trayvon Martin at space camp

Trayvon Martin, at camp

Image Source: Wikipedia

Despite the police dispatch on the phone advising Zimmerman not to follow the teen, he continued, eventually chasing Trayvon down when the teen ran from the truck and taking it upon himself to apprehend him. In the struggle that ensued when Zimmerman attempted to detain Trayvon, Zimmerman shot and killed the high schooler.

When the police arrived on the scene at 7:17 p.m., George Zimmerman had minor injuries and Trayvon Martin was unresponsive and lying face down in the grass after having been shot in the chest at close range. After failed attempts to resuscitate the teen, the paramedics declared Trayvon Martin dead at 7:30 p.m. Zimmerman strenuously defended his actions as self-defense and was eventually acquitted for murder in 2013. His acquittal is a direct result of the precedent set by the Washington v. Davis case in 1980 requiring plaintiffs to prove “discriminatory intent,” a standard because of its requirement to demonstrate motives, is incredibly hard to meet. (Read the article on “The Black 1980s” to learn more.)

The incident and trial garnered national attention sparking outrage at so-called stand-your-ground laws, racial profiling, and law enforcement’s systemic disparaging of Black persons and Black narratives of events.

President Barrack Obama responded to the events attempting to draw a connection between the tragedy and the universal compassion of parents: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon” (Williams 2012, p. 1). A year after Zimmerman’s acquittal, another Black teen’s death would similarly stir public reaction and indignation, especially in the St. Louis area.

Breonna Taylor

In the late spring and summer of 2020, two African American deaths led to national and international protests against police violence and systemic racism.

Photographic portrait of Breonna Taylor, during a graduation ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky.

Source: Wikipedia

In both cases, the deaths demonstrated violent police practices against Black citizens and glimpses of the excessive use of force often experienced by African Americans at the hands of police.

On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were sleeping at her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky when police knocked on the door and then forced entry using a battering ram (Duvall and Costello, 2020). The Louisville Metropolitan Police Depart used a “no-knock” search warrant to enter Taylor’s residence shortly after midnight; there is some dispute whether the police identified themselves, which is particularly important as they entered the premises in “plain clothes.” Upon hearing the loud noise, Taylor and Walker yelled “Who is it?” several times; Walker claims that there was no answer, while the police claim that they had identified themselves. According to a New York Times investigation, “In interviews with nearly a dozen neighbors, only one person said he heard the officers shout ‘Police!’ a single time” (Callimachi, 2020). Thinking that there were intruders and possibly thieves in the apartment, Kenneth Walker grabbed his gun and fired what he called a “warning shot” claiming in interviews and testimony to have aimed his gun at the floor. The bullet hit an officer in the leg, at which point officers opened fire indiscriminately in response. Not only did the officers shoot into Taylor’s unlit apartment from the entryway, but one ran out of the apartment to also open fire through the patio door and window. In the chaotic scene, police officers fired at least 32 rounds into Breonna Taylor’s apartment and the adjoining apartments (Callimachi, 2020). In the aftermath of the flurry of police bullets, the unarmed Breonna Taylor lay in the hallway of her apartment with six gunshot wounds; she was declared dead at the scene.

The incident drew national attention because of the overwhelming and indiscriminate violent response from police officers. Their actions were an obvious danger to public safety, and further demonstrated systemic and procedural failures with law enforcement and criminal justice systems.

First, the “no-knock” warrant was obtained to investigate Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, and the evidence used to justify such a warrant was later found to be tenuous at best; since the police officers were only meant to search for any packages remaining from Taylor’s ex, the late-night, forced-entry search was clearly excessive (Callimachi, 2020). It’s also worth noting that after the events that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death that police never actually completed the search for packages detailed in the warrant. 

Second, Kenneth Walker’s “warning shot” was entirely within his legal rights in the state of Kentucky which is a “stand-your-ground” state allowing the use of lethal force to defend oneself and home, and this is especially true as “by nearly all accounts” the police did not provide sufficient announcement of their identity. Stand-your-ground laws were used by George Zimmerman to justify his lethal use of force “in self defense” against the teenage Trayvon Martin in 2012, yet the officers immediately arrested and detained Kenneth Walker, even as police body cameras show him crying and telling the officers to help Breonna (Callimachi, 2020). 

Third, the initial investigations revealed substantial irregularities, including evidence of what appears to be a cover up. The four-page incident report released three months after Breonna’s death was not only sparse in details, it was notably factually incorrect, “listing her injuries as ‘none’ even though she was shot… and died on her hallway floor in a pool of blood” and indicating that no forced entry had occurred, even though police used a battering ram to punch through her apartment door (Duvall, 2020). Additionally, in July of 2020, prosecutors attempted to change the narrative surrounding Breonna Taylor by attempting to tie her to her ex-boyfriend’s drug activities–despite there not being evidence to support such a connection. In fact, “Jamarcus Glover, the focus of a series of Louisville police raids, including one in which officers shot and killed [his ex-girlfriend] Breonna Taylor, was offered a plea bargain… if he would say that Taylor was a member of his ‘organized crime syndicate’” (Riley, 2020). Despite Glover and others’ repeated consistent testimony that Taylor had nothing to do with his illegal activities, prosecutors offered a plea deal so enticing that it could have meant probation rather than jail time. Several commentators on the potential plea deal, including attorneys from the Kentucky Innocence Project, have gone so far as to call this deal a “bribe" in their attempted smear campaign against Breonna Taylor (Riley, 2020). Glover did not accept the plea deal, nor did he ever change his story that Breonna was not involved in his activities.

Unlike the intentional convoluting of information that occurred by the police department and the prosecutor’s office with Michael Brown, the intense national scrutiny surrounding Breonna Taylor’s narrative allowed it to remain relatively straightforward as an example of the injustices and structural inequities experienced by Black Americans.

George Floyd

On May 25, 2020, police in Minneapolis, Minnesota were called to a local convenience store in response to a “forgery in progress.” Earlier a 46-year-old, African American man named George Floyd had made a purchase using a 20-dollar bill that the clerk suspected as being a possible counterfeit (Bogel-Burroughs and Wright, 2021). The clerk reported the possible counterfeit to his manager, though he also stated on the record that he didn’t think Floyd knew the bill was a fake. The police were called, and when they arrived on the scene, they violently removed George Floyd by force from the vehicle in which he was sitting, handcuffed him, and pinned him down on the street (Fernandez and Burch, 2020). Despite there being video evidence that Floyd was not resisting or being uncooperative with the police officers or their directions, Office Derek Chauvin, a White police officer, pinned him with a knee driven into George Floyd’s neck and upper back. He held his knee down on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, as Floyd’s diminishing screams “I can’t breathe” and cries for help continued. Even during the last two minutes–after Floyd was motionless and without a pulse while they waited for medical support–the knee remained firmly pressed down upon his neck. 

Picture of George Floyd

George Floyd

Image Source: Wikipedia

Bystanders captured the brutal episode on camera, and there was immediate public outrage at the hyper-militant, over-response by officers to the African American man.

Further, George Floyd’s death seemed even more uncalled for because the minor violation that began the incident was the accidental use of a counterfeit bill. During the summer of 2020, protests appeared across the United States in most major cities, with the names of local African Americans and local incidents being added to the chants for justice and change. The several video recordings of George Floyd’s death showed his desperate cries for relief lasted at least eight minutes and forty-six seconds, and many protests took this time and number as symbolic–often with the crowds holding a long silence for 8:46 in honor of Floyd and all those other African Americans killed at the hands of police. Additionally, Floyd’s words “I can’t breathe!” swept across the national protests and conversation as a real, concrete cry from a black American suffering, and also a larger metaphorical call to action by the African American community and allies for fundamental changes to systems of policing and criminal justice (Fernandez and Burch, 2020). 

Because it was filmed and disseminated via social media, and because it was so clear a violation of Floyd’s basic human rights, the incident spread globally.

Its widespread attention helped raise awareness concerning the experiences of Black citizens who live under the shadow of over-policing and systems that have long traditions of racism embedded just below the surface.

Floyd’s legacy is that of a global, perspective-reorienting event, leading to serious conversations seeking to reform the systems and the structures of funding social services, including the police. Additionally, the protests and growing awareness of the long-standing effects of historical slavery and the ongoing effects of systemic racism led the Black Lives Matter Movement from the sidelines into mainstream conversation.

Your Turn

How did these deaths underscore the long standing racism inherent in law enforcement and American society? What can we do to move our country toward a better criminal justice system?

Stephanie Brizee
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