A Marble Run of Forty U.S. Police Killings of Civilians, May 2020

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do
and what is right to do, wrote Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
Justice Potter Stewart died in December of 1985,
long before May of 2020.
In May of 2020, police killed George Floyd and 39 others, after and before.
Before police killed George Floyd, they also killed Dreasjon Reed.
Reed live-streamed his own death, including
cops joking afterward.
It was no joke when a police car ran down pregnant Ashlynn Lisby.
Lisby’s fetus did not survive.
Cops shot McHale Rose,
cops saying Rose shot first after calling in a fake burglary.
There was no burglary
in the case of Gregory Howe.
Howe was pulled over for not wearing a seat belt.
No seat belt, an expired driver’s license, fourteen bullets.
Howe expired, fourteen bullets in him,
four cops.
For cops, Robert Johnson Jr was a “nuisance,” having hit a parked car.
He stayed in the parking lot, offering to pay for repairs.
But there was no way to repair
Robert Johnson Jr.
Johnson died, no way to stop the bleeding.
No way did Gary Kevin Partin stop at the traffic stop
so, right in traffic,
an officer shot and killed him.
Officers shot and killed Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal
after Palacios-Carbajal ran several blocks,
block after block, stumbling and falling once,
then again,
stumbling and falling for the third time. Cops fired 28 times,
at least 28 times, 18 times after Palacios-Carbajal conked out.
After Maurice Gordon Jr.’s car conked out,
he waited for a tow.
Because the tow was slow, he waited in a State Trooper’s SUV.
What made him flee that SUV?
The trooper used pepper spray,
peppering Gordon then shooting him six times.
Police responded to a shooting,
unrelated to Christopher Clark.
Clark was shot, according to the report, “for some reason.”
The reason cops shot Anthony Grove?
Because he was armed,
and the armed cops insist Grove fired first.
Though the cops fired first, killing Justin Mink,
they maintain Mink was a threat with his knife.
With his knife,
Mink cut into an officer’s shirt,
tearing the shirt and puncturing the cop’s bulletproof vest.
Mink had no bulletproof vest, of course,
and, of course,
he died shortly thereafter.
Shortly after cops tried to arrest Dion Johnson,
Johnson woke up. He’d been sleeping,
sleeping off his beers,
in his parked truck.
His parked truck was full of beer but also a gun.
The cop thought his own gun would make Johnson comply
but sleepy Johnson lunged at the cop
and you can imagine the rest.
Rest in peace, George Floyd, who, at 8, wrote an essay,
who, at 46, was killed in 8 minutes and 46 seconds. At 8, Floyd wrote
and wrote, imagining someday
he would be a Supreme Court Judge.
Imagine Supreme Court Judge George Floyd
instead of George Floyd pinned down. Imagine
George Floyd penning a dissenting opinion
rather than causing dissent.
Imagine his pithy Supreme catchphrase
catching on. Stewart wrote, I know it when I see it,
his knowing of the “it” referring to pornography.
Pornography wasn’t what Stewart saw in Louis Malle’s The Lover.
A lover not a fighter—
that was George Floyd.
Floyd might have also written, I know it when I see it,
his knowing of the “it” referring to brutality.
Brutality was what he saw.
Floyd’s fake twenty-dollar bill
turned out, in fact, not fake. It was as real
as the cop’s real gun
used to kill Reymer Gagarin.
Cops used the excuse that Gagarin had a gun
but Gagarin’s gun turned out to be a fake.
Gary P. Dorton’s knife was not
fake. His neighbors feared
Dorton, feared he was going to hurt himself.
But police hurt him instead,
shooting him in his home.
Also shot in his home was Joe Louis Castillanos.
Castillanos was threatening suicide.
Threatening suicide,
he fired his gun at the ground.
Then he fell to the ground when cops fired their guns at him.
Cops fired their guns
at John Vik outside his home.
Vik walked outside after barricading himself inside.
Barricaded inside,
Vik had held a gun to someone else’s head.
What was in Jason Jesse Gallegos’ head? A domestic violence call
met with wild violence?
Cops say they were only trying to help.
Another cop says he was trying to help
John Allen Dunaway III.
Dunaway had been in a car accident and the cop tasered him.
The cop tasered him twice (an accident?)
and Dunaway ran.
Dunaway ran towards his car. Then the cop shot him.
The cops shot Tracy Drowne after she hit a man in the face.
By hitting a man in the face,
they say, she’d committed domestic violence.
Richard Councilman committed domestic violence, then aimed a gun
at police who aimed their guns and shot him.
After police shot Councilman
they learned his gun was a fake.
Kenneth Bennett’s was not fake but a BB gun. Cops waited an hour,
an hour of negotiations, then felt threatened enough to shoot him.
Cops also felt threatened
by Robert Avitia who shot at them.
Avitia shot at the cops (no injuries), then ran.
Cops ran after him
and shot him. Was it a home invasion
that had police invade John Alvarado’s space? And what
was the police’s headspace
as they shot? Alexander Scott was walking,
“walking while drunk”
when an officer shot him.
Officers shot Modesto Reyes after an “unspecified traffic violation.”
What about this specific violation?
Cops ran after him,
and, after Reyes tripped, killed him.
Cops killed Rommel Mendoza
who was armed with a sword.
But Mendoza’s sword was no match for police bullets.
Police bullets
killed Tony McDade who’d alluded to suicide,
who’d alluded to suicide by cop.
McDade, they say, stabbed his friend.
Hector Hernandez stabbed a K-9 deployed by police,
police deployed to a domestic violence call.
Call the violence what you will,
police shot Hernandez.
Hernandez died.
The K-9 made a speedy recovery.
Joshua Blessed was speeding, driving recklessly,
say the reckless police
who chased and shot him.
There was no chase when police shot Rubin Smith III.
Smith was shooting
near a police station
when the police stationed there stole his life.
Police watching a stolen vehicle noticed a suspect
and suspected
Stephen Edward Ferguson was up to no good.
If he had known what was good for him,
he’d have exited the car.
But Ferguson wouldn’t get out of the car. Cops found him a “deadly threat”
and then he was dead.
John Benedict Coleman killed an officer
and the other officers killed Coleman. “Boom boom boom,”
said a neighbor, “Boom boom boom.
It was that fast.”
Jarvis Sullivan was fast in his car, trying to escape police
but he couldn’t escape.
Confused, Sullivan drove towards an officer
and that officer’s bullets stopped him. Momodou Lamin Sisay
failed to stop
when cops tried to pull him over for a tag violation.
Sisay’s tag was expired. The son of a Gambian diplomat,
Sisay did not have a diplomatic death.
Upset, Heba Momtaz-Azhari
upset a police officer with her butcher knife. Momtaz-Azhari’s brother
Muhammad had been arrested
and she was outside the courthouse.
She got up from a bench outside the courthouse when an officer shot her.
Officers shot Derrick Thompson
after he shot another man.
The other man died after a few days. Thompson died at the scene.
It was such a scene,
police say, that they had to use a Taser
but the Taser didn’t work
on Thomas Sutherlin during a traffic stop.
The police didn’t stop and wound up shooting him.
The police wound up shooting
Israel Berry after responding to a call
of a woman bashing his car with a bat. He was still in the car,
still in the driver’s seat,
when everything went still. Why
oh why, did the police shoot Berry? Why was the woman so angry?
Why are the cops so angry?
Anger seeks to correct injustice.
Injustice is reinforced by contempt. Ethics is knowing the difference.

I Know It When I See It

Denise Duhamel