So another black person died at the gun of a police officer,and we all equal takes a collective sigh as we look on to various social media sites to see if we can get the full story, to see if we can make sense out of the matter. When I first heard about the killing of Korryn Gaines I spent much of my time looking around to see if I could find out more. Of course, I saw the usual justification arguments but I suppose what I was looking for mostly is the outrage (and when I say "outrage" I'm nottalking about riots and revolts, I'm talking about a sense of shock or need to know more about the situation).

When these horrible events happen to black men they are met with a vast outrage across different forms of media. People scream for justice, police reform, etc. Very rarely do shootings of black women and women of color receive that type of attention. Their cases are equally warranted to be in the mainstream, but they are not. So as I was looking around to see what the full story was, I kept wondering Where is her outrage?

I must admit the situation is quite complicating at the surface: Officers arrived at Gaines residence to serve her with a warrant for her arrest (minor traffic violations); Gaines refuses to come out; officers gain access to her apartment to find Gaines sitting on the ground with her child and a "long gun"; there was three hours of negotiations; Gaines points gun at officers and threatens to kill them if they don't leave; officers fire a shot, Gaines fires back; officers shoot Gaines died and her son is also wounded by a bullet. Or so the story goes. More information could have been provided if only the officers' body cams were working during the incident (convenient for them, I suppose). We may never get the real story but there are two facts we know and can't ignore: she is dead and her son was shot.

For the longest I sat trying to make sense of this whole thing. On the surface level you think Yeah, she was pointing a gun at the officers and threatened to kill them, so what were they to do? but I could not accept that. I knew that there was another way to look at this story.

I want to know why the SWAT team set up a barricade around her apartment complex for a warrant on misdemeanor traffic violations. I want to know why the SWAT team did not have a better negotiation plan. I want to know what that negotiation plan was. I want to know why the SWAT felt treated by one woman with a gun (and her child) versus the WHOLE SWAT team. I want to know why the SWAT felt to need to shot her while her child was still in her arms. Were they that threatened that by this woman? If their objective was to take Korryn to jail because of the warrant for her arrest, why didn't they do that through any means necessary? They did not do their job...or did they? Was the real objective to possibly kill this woman who was known to give police officers trouble, who was currently trying to sue the Baltimore police? Was the real objective to shut her up? In that case, they did do their job.

Korryn Gaines feared the police for her life, so much so that the interactions she had with them were not pleasant. Many people have this same fear and it is reflected in many different interactions. It is sad that her fear has cost her her life and her children are motherless. Can we all just take a moment to sympathize with that instead of saying how she put her child in danger, how it was her fault, how she deserved it? What we need to do is try to discuss the alternatives instead of looking for the justifications.

I could sit here and talk about the double standards of the many incidents when white people were armed and dangerous in the presence of police officers but what good would that do? Maybe those incidents were products of very well trained officers and if those officers where there at Korryn's apartment then the outcome would have gone way smoother.

All police officers are not bad, we know that. The bad officers certainly do miss it up for the good ones. But the good ones need to speak up. They need to help prevent these incidents from happening.

I was looking for that same outrage that those men before her received, but I was only met with people who were trying write her narrative, to cast her as the "bad mother", to call her crazy, to mock her death. And in many cases both white and black (mostly) men were saying these negative comments. I can't help but question what would the reaction be if this were a black man. What would he be met with? Praise? Honor? Why not the same for Korryn?

I was hesitant to write this article because I feel like I do too many pieces about race and I was also hesitant because I was expecting (or hoping) that there would be plenty of people speaking on this matter already. But as I looked on many forms of social media I did not see the mass outrage, I did not see the same respect.

Her death and many other unjust deaths of women of color by police officers are things that should not go unmentioned or undocumented. They should be discussed broadly, they should be treated with the same level as the deaths of black men.

Maybe none of this has anything to do with race. Maybe these incidents are simply products of bad training. But when we constantly see death after death of people of color is it hard not to think in that regard.

I feel bad for her children that had to witness their mother go through these encounters with officers and for her son to get shot by an officer, and then for them to one day see the thing people said (or didn't say) about their mother. I hope they don't suffer from that bitterness forever. Imagine being them. Imagine how you would be.

When will it be enough for everyone to see that there is a problem with untrained police officers? When will we start seeing how women of color are treated poorly by members of there own communities and when will we all work to stop that? When will we start seeing the truth that we do not benefit from the oppression of others and we definitely do not benefit from the oppression of people who look like us?

If black lives are going to matter than ALL black lives should matter (there should not even be a need to say that statement). We need to speak out when we see contradictions or problems within movements that we are supposed to benefit from.

Korryn, and many more like her, deserve the same outrage and respect as those men before her. Where is it?