A Plan to Stop Police Killings of Black Men
Black voters’ power at the ballot box is vast, but it’s time we used it for one very specific thing
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Watching the cellphone video of Ahmaud Arbery being hunted and gunned down hit me differently. It wasn’t more or less tragic than the many, many other Black men whose murders we have witnessed over the past decade — the ones choked to death on a sidewalk, gunned down while playing with a toy gun in the park, cut down in the passenger seat while complying with an officer’s directives. But it was very different in another way: The two White men who killed the 25-year-old Arbery, George and Travis McMichael, were not officers of the law. The father and son were merely residents of Georgia, who took it upon themselves to leave their homes and hunt Arbery down as he jogged through the neighborhood. The Jim Crow-era tactics of the past have become contemporary trauma.
Yet, the most chilling part wasn’t the act itself, but finding out that the prosecuting attorney advised the Glynn County Police Department that there was “insufficient probable cause” to issue arrest warrants for the McMichaels. Be clear: That decision deemed a Black man’s life…
