Trayvon Martin’s legacy and Black Lives Matter – BBC News

Opinion:

Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer.  On July 17, 2014, an unarmed black man named Eric Garner died on Staten Island, N.Y., after police officers threw him to the ground and put him in a choke hold. Garner’s last words, as recorded on a cellphone video, were: “I can’t breathe.” He repeated the phrase 11 times.

State police have launched a criminal investigation after footage showing the violent arrest of a University of Virginia student son March 18, 2015, parked protests and prompted concern among top officials.  Images of bloodied Martese Johnson being held down by an officer were shared widely online on Wednesday, along with footage of the black 20-year-old calling the cops handcuffing him “racists.”

On August 9, 2014Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by 28-year-old white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Oscar Grant III was a 22-year-old African-American man who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2008 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California.

On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African-American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department and subsequently charged for possessing a knife.  While being transported in a police van, Gray fell into a coma and was taken to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma CenterGray died on April 19, 2015; his death was ascribed to injuries to his spinal cord.  On April 21, 2015, pending an investigation of the incident, six Baltimore police officers were suspended

All of these high profiled tragadies occured during the presidency elect and POTUS tenure of Barack Obama.  These very clouded life situations came crashing down long before President Trump was even thought to have a shot at the White House.  Yet, with only one year into the job all things racial were thown into his lap and later being the cause and instigator.  All things police badness is being thrown at the current POTUS, where his predecessor is walking around as though he tackled these problem areas with concern and success.  But, it is just opposite where he left this nation in the lurch of an unattebded domestic attacked against youth, females, and blacks.



On July 15, 2017, Justine Damond (née Ruszczyk) a 40-year-old white Australian-American woman, was fatally shot by a 33-year-old Mohamed Noor, a Somali-American Minneapolis Police Department officer, after she had called 911 to report the possible assault of a woman in an alley behind her house.

Author: spirit