This past Thursday, a 49 year old white man in Kentucky named Lance Storz shot and killed THREE police officers and a beloved police dog. Lance, the white man who shot and killed 3 cops and their dog, is still alive.
In custody. Has an attorney. Will get his day in court. Will still get to speak to his family. Didn’t get shot a single time.
On Thursday, right before a white man in Kentucky shot and killed 3 police officers and their dog, a white man in Alabama shot 2 police officers, killing one, and horribly wounding the other. It hardly even made the news.
In custody. Without a scratch. He has attorneys. Can call his family. And he will get his day in court. Police didn’t shoot him. Or kill him. He will likely live a long time.
In the same week that these 2 different white men in 2 different states brutally shot and killed 4 cops, shot and injured others, and killed their police dog, and were each TAKEN INTO CUSTODY, alive, and given attorneys, police in Akron, Ohio fired at least NINETY shots at an UNARMED 25 year old Black man named Jayland Walker.
Jayland had NEVER been in trouble a day in his life. He was a sweet, quiet soul. A Door Dash driver. Beloved by his family.
Jayland was pulled over for a TRAFFIC VIOLATION. And we don’t even know if that’s real.
They shot Jayland at least 60 times. They shot him at least 12 times in his face alone. His body has so many holes that EXPERTS can’t really determine if he was shot 60 times or 65 or 75.
He was literally shot from the tip of his head all the way to his feet. Firing squads don’t normally fire this many shots at men on death row. His body was unrecognizable.
Mind you, unlike the white men in Alabama that SHOT AND KILLED COPS, Jayland did no such thing. And yet those men are alive and Jayland was basically lynched by these cops.
I don’t even need to talk about the white supremacists that killed Black folk in Buffalo and Charleston and got taken in alive.
No matter what police say, Jayland, like those white men that KILLED COPS, deserved a judge and a jury and attorneys, and everything else that American citizens are promised.
Here is where the rubber meets the road.
While we all pay taxes, and are supposed to be afforded rights in this country, ALL OF US know that those rights aren’t applied equally across racial lines.
You are SAFER in this ugly country if you are white and SLAUGHTER COPS than you are if you are Black and do damn near anything.
Unlike some people, I’m not calling for calm. Calmness never works in this country.
Love and appreciate y’all,
Shaun