The legacy of police brutality lives on in the United States, with a pair of police officers being acquitted for killing Black individuals.

What happened?

The prominent shooting of Philando Castile on June 6th, 2016, created a universal reaction of anger, with the acquittal adding further into the storm of hatred. A shooting of an upstanding citizen, who was also a licensed firearm owner resulting in his death, drew heat from the left and right side of the political spectrum present in the United States. It shines a potential light at universal recognition of a structural problem of anti-blackness, or perhaps merely an issue related to police brutality which exists in the United States.

Such instances are not foreign, as yet another extremely recent instance, particularly being on the 21st of June, shed light on the same issue yet again with the acquitting of one Dominique Heaggan-Brown, former police officer for 3 years in Milwaukee, for the shooting of Sylville K. Smith. The initial shooting sparked immense protest in the streets, the severity of which required the governor, Scott Walker, to declare a state of emergency.

The evidence from the trial provided reasoning for the protest, as it shed light on some extremely concerning details. Mr. Smith, upon a police chase, was shot and incapacitated. However, after Officer Brown had Mr. Smith in a position where he could not resist arrest as he was fully incapacitated and unarmed, he was not in a position of danger. In that condition, Officer Brown shot Mr. Smith once more after he was unarmed with his hands up in the ground after being shot, a position which posed absolutely no threat to the officer.

What does this mean?

The history of police brutality in the United States is nothing foreign. The legacy of slavery carries itself through time and manifests itself in the form of antagonism towards Black people, but that’s not news for the people of the United States, or the world writ large for that matter. However, when circumstances such as the ones aforementioned present themselves, one has to question how structurally ingrained such systematic discrimination truly is.

To take evidence that blatantly displays a lack of resistance from a Black individual under scrutiny from the police, along with compliance to the demands of the police, a shooting is a complete disregard for human life. Such direct targeting of police brutality towards people of color has become such a regular occurrence, however, that it has practically become normalized due to the frequency of the occurrences. But, given a scenario like the case of Philando Castile, where both sides of the political spectrum come together to claim this instance as an injustice, at what point does such brutality end?

Resistance is also universally condemned to such atrocities, with rhetoric such as “Blue Lives Matter,” surrounding the discussion has become the crowning representation of any forms of resistance. Dissent to the behavior of the police is ideologically and socially condemned, as if such behavior was unfit of belonging in civil society. Yet, we behave as if that is a state of normalcy that we desire to preserve in the status quo simply because we find comfort in a state of privilege, gradually reinforcing that a social and racial hierarchy is the optimal state of functionality for society and what we should strive to achieve.

In a state of violence, the survival of the Black population in the United States has become an uncertainty.