"Why are the police doing this?"
I'm walking in the front door after a long afternoon of playing the recently released Pokemon GO and apartment hunting with my best friend, and these are the first words I hear out of my mother's mouth.
I look at the television and see that she's watching the news, and a story about Philando Castile is on.
Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer in Falcon Heights, a city outside of Minneapolis, five times. His fiance Diamond (Lavisha) Reynolds went live on Facebook moments after the altercation occurred and broadcasted the event. They had been pulled over for a taillight being out. Diamond's four year old daughter was sitting in the backseat at the time.
According to Diamond, she and Philando has been complying with police during the stop. When asked her license and registration, Philando told the police officer he was licensed to carry, and informed him that he indeed had a firearm on him, which is what you are required to do.
This is when the police officer shot Philando five times.
The end of the livestream concludes with noise, as Diamond no longer has her phone in her possession. (She claims in a later video that police had thrown her phone away from her.) She is being detained, and is hysterical, wondering if Philando was dead. Towards the end of the video, you can hear a small voice.
"It's okay, I'm right here with you." Those were the words out of Diamond's four year old daughter's mouth.
Just a day before in Baton Rouge, Alton Sterling was shot and killed by police during an altercation at a Triple S Food Mart. Apparently, Alton had been selling CD's outside of the mart when police were called, he was forced to the ground, and shot. The event was captured on cell phone video.
Two African American men gunned down by police officer in two days. In both videos, the police officer responsible sound shaky, nervous, and seem to know what they have done. Exclaiming profanities along the way.
According to the Washington Post, since the beginning of 2016 509 people have been killed by police officers. This is close to the half that were killed during the year 2015 alone. (2015 ended the year with 990)
When my mom asked me that question, I couldn't give her a clear answer. I shook my head in disappointment. "It's because they were black," I told her. It's nothing new. It seems more recently that we've been hearing about this issue. Some more familiar names are Michael Brown, Christian Taylor, Sandra Bland, and Eric Garner.
"Police need to stop killing people like this," my mom says with worry in her eyes.
When you're raised to believe that police officers are meant to protect people, what do you do when police begin to murder innocent people?
