Officer Michael Brelo has been aquitted of voluntary manslaughter and felonious assault in the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.
A 22-mile high-speed chase involving Russell and Williams took place back in November of 2012. This began when an officer tried pulling them over for a turn signal violation. The car backfired, which is allegedly what made officers think someone in the car had fired a gun.
When the chase was over, an astounding THIRTEEN cops fired into the vehicle where Russell and Williams were sitting. Combined, they fired 137 times into the car, hitting Russell and Williams over 20 times EACH. Prosecutors alleged that Brelo specifically, who was the only cop charged in this case, stood on the hood and fired 15 times into the windshield. Of course, coward Brelo told investigators that he thought he and his partner were being shot at.
This is the same story we hear over and over and over again when cops take a life, especially when that life is black or brown. “We thought this” or “I thought I saw or gun” or something similar. The fact remains that NO gun was ever found in the car that Russell and Williams were occupying.
The judge aquitted Brelo, in part, because he said he couldn’t determine if he, alone, had fired the fatal shots. He also said that the officer’s actions were “constitutionally reasonable” based on the events that preceeded this shooting. Protests have broken out in Cleveland and around the nation as people see this as just another example of black lives not really mattering.
In regards to everything involving this case, I am utterly appalled. We live in a nation where you can gang up on a team of two, (as these officers did), and fire over 130 times into their car, and get away with it. Every last person involved. NO ONE approves of high speed chases, as they are dangerous to everyone involved and innocent people as well, but they fired when the chase was over. But also, are we a humane country or not?
Many of us have been involved with the police. Many of us have criminal records. Just earlier this week, we have seen Conservative after Conservative come out to offer forgiveness for serial child molester Josh Duggar. It seems that when Conservative whites do horrible things, they deserve forgiveness and love. But when people of color do anything wrong at all, ever in life, their killings are perfectly acceptable. I am truly disgusted by this verdict and by the amount of people I have seen online saying that what these officers did was okay.
You should have to justify EVERY SINGLE SHOT you fire at someone. How can they justify over 130 shots into the car of people that, like it or not, DID NOT have a gun. They were not firing on them. Anything that happened before does not justifying this onslaught of extreme violence that the cops perpetuated. This again, shows the lack of decency that is embedded in our culture and throughout the police force. The mentality one must possess to gang up on people and fire this many rounds is despicable.
We need better laws and a justice system that dismantles the notion that police lives are far more valuable than anyone else’s. But we also need a cultural shift. These incidents just don’t happen in other first-world, developed, rich, powerful, etc. nations. It just doesn’t. We are a trigger-happy de-sensitized, racist country and so often our police represent that all too well.
Cleveland is irate, understandably, and yet they continue to await the results of the investigation over the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice at the end of last year. I suspect even bigger protests if his killer is acquitted and I would want to be right there with them. This continuous fear-based/racist policing has to end and we will not stop until it does.
