The young man pictured here is Jordan Edwards -- a fifteen-year-old 9th grader with over a 3.5 grade point average. He has never been in legal trouble. Last Saturday night, he was shot and killed by a policeman in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs.He was leaving a party with some of his friends. None of them were intoxicated, and none of them were armed with any kind of weapon. The Balch Springs police chief tried to justify the shooting by claiming the car the youth was riding in was backing up toward the police in an aggressive manner.
That was not true, and the police chief changed his story after it was revealed that videotape existed that showed the car was not backing toward the police -- it was going forward and away from the police. In other words, no police officer (or anyone else) was being endangered at the time of the shooting (done by an officer with a rifle) -- and there was no justification for the shooting.
This happens far too often in this country -- and sadly, that will probably continue now that Donald Trump is president. He has already demonstrated that he comes down on the side of police in every incident. And with white supremacists in the White House and a racist as Attorney General, some of the more racist officers seem to feel justified in treating Black lives differently than those of Whites.
Kelly Macias in Daily Kos says:
This is an all-too-common occurrence: black teens are 21 more times likely to be shot and killed by police than their white peers. So despite what naysayers want to believe, this happens routinely. It is happening with alarming frequency. White bodies are not met with the kind of state-sanctioned violence that black bodies are met with. Again, white honor students do not go to parties and get shot by police. Police violence against black people is a serious problem—one that needs to be addressed immediately, and one that will only get worse with unabashed white supremacists running our government.
I agree. THIS MUST STOP!
