Know Their Names.
Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Philando Castille, Stephon Clark, Atatiana Jefferson, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. A list of tragedies, a list of deaths that shouldn’t have happened, a list of the consequences of “bad apple” officers.
We are constantly told by Twitter and Instagram to “know their names”, to know their stories. But somehow, knowing it all, donating all the time and raising awareness just doesn’t feel like enough. Especially from our position across the Atlantic, it can often feel like how much we shout doesn’t make a difference. The most recent and obvious example of when I had this feeling would be the results of the legal proceedings after the tragic death of Breonna Taylor.
We all know her story. An innocent woman with a bright future as an EMT, at the beginning of a global pandemic no less, killed in the middle of the night because of a questionable warrant. As someone who is neither a legal expert nor an actual reporter, I feel limited in what I am qualified to talk about in this case. So, I will selfishly take this time to talk about my feelings and how I’ve personally perceived this entire situation.
To start, there is the grand jury only prosecuting one of the three officers, and that prosecution not being related to the actual death of Taylor. I, along with most people following the protests, was simultaneously shocked and completely unsurprised. The less extreme emotion, unsurprised, is easier to explain. When you look at it purely on paper according to the police’s story, it seems almost reasonable (police get the warrant, police follow up on the warrant, police respond to gunfire). And from countless situations like these in the past, it is not surprising to see this kind of over-lenient outlook becoming the one accepted by the law.
The more I read about this, the more I think, how did any of this happen?. Why did a judge sign off this no-knock warrant that lacked just cause? Why was the ambulance that was on standby outside the apartment told to leave an hour before the raid, counter to standard practice? Why was there a clearly falsified police report that suggested that Taylor suffered “no injuries”? Why did a completely innocent woman have to die that night? The message that I get from that grand jury decision, the part that really shocks me, is that “according to the law, these officers did nothing wrong”.
That is not a truth that I, or any of the protesters on the street, can accept. We cannot accept that a completely innocent woman was killed in the dead of night and that nothing can be done about it. The law is cold and according to its cruel and biased calculations, nothing went wrong.
The police system is undeniably broken. As seen in Sergeant Mattingly’s (the officer who was shot in the leg that night) email to his colleagues: “good guys are demonized, and criminals are canonized”. If he is the good guy being vilified in this metaphor, then he is describing two innocent people, one of whom died that night, as criminals. Which is exactly the problem with policing in the US. The police see the civilians that they’re meant to protect as criminals. But right now, what feels even more broken is the legal system that actively supports Mattingly’s thinking. The legal system that let that judge sign off on a no-knock warrant that clearly never had enough justification. The same legal system that now tells us that “nothing’s wrong here, just go home”.
I realise that I’m being too bleak. There is more to this than just the injustice we see from the law. Breonna Taylor died in March, and yet we still say her name. We’re in the middle of a US election year, a global pandemic, rising global tensions, and a constantly changing news cycle. Yet, we refuse to let go and move on. That is the same as with all the names we constantly repeat and remember.
When I ask myself what the point is, I remember that there is value in remembering and repeating their names. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to forget and move on. We can’t just let go and hope that it won’t happen again. When we choose to remember their stories, it allows us to fight against a systematically racist police system. In doing so, we can continue to hold those who represent us accountable and continue to demand change. So never forget their names.
Eric Garner was killed in 2014, Alton Sterling was killed in 2016, Philando Castille 2016, Stephon Clark 2018, Atatiana Jefferson 2019, George Floyd May, and Breonna Taylor March this year. The world is crazy and so much happens every day. And yet, we still know their names.
