Verdict relief punctured by latest police shooting
Zach Usmani gripped his phone, shoulders hunched over the steering wheel as he sat in his parked car outside a gym in Columbus. He was watching a video livestream when Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill read the verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Wow, Usmani thought, as Chauvin was convicted on two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter in the of death of George Floyd while Chauvin had him handcuffed with a knee on his neck.
The 32-year-old said he felt relieved, but not satisfied.
“I hope people recognize this is not enough and this alone is not justice,” he said.
A half-hour later, news broke that Columbus police had shot and killed a 16year-old Black girl on the Southeast Side after responding to a 911 call at 4:35 p.m. Tuesday about an attempted stabbing.
The deep sighs of relief, drawn by the Black community, protesters, activists and allies across Columbus after Chauvin’s guilty verdict were punctured by news of another fatal police shooting.
“The police just can’t stop themselves from killing Black people even with all the attention on this,” Usmani said. “Relief is just so tepid. It’s tepid because I know this does not protect the next person from getting shot, protect the next person from being brutalized.”
Body camera video released by Columbus police Tuesday night shows an officer approaching a driveway with a group of young people standing around. In the video, it appears that the 16-yearold, identified as Ma’khia Bryant, pushes or swings at a person who falls to the ground.
Bryant then appears to swing a knife at a girl who is on the hood of a car, and the officer fires his weapon what sounds like four times, striking the girl.
‘Doomed to keep repeating these tragedies’
Ramon Obey II, an activist and president of JUST (Justice, Unity & Social Transformation), a community organization that hosts a biweekly food program, watched the Chauvin verdict on TV with his mom, sister and younger brother.
“We were very unsure on how this would turn out,” he said, recalling how his mom remembered being glued to the TV almost 30 years ago after the officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted.
The 23-year-old described the feeling of hearing a guilty verdict to the butterflies in your stomach that drop while riding a rollercoaster.
“I’m flabbergasted,” he said. “It’s honestly like the words can’t come to me quick enough, because even though I’ve seen a man murdered on video, I didn’t know if America had seen a man murdered on video.”
But his excitement was short-lived. After hearing news of the police shooting in Columbus on Tuesday, Obey said he was unsurprised.
“The system of policing is broken, and until change takes place we are doomed to keep repeating these tragedies,” he said.
The question of justice is subjective,
Heather Johnson said.
Johnson, a fellow activist and mother of six, said that no guilty verdict will ever justify what happened to Floyd or the shooting death of the girl on Tuesday.
“How do you justify murdering a 15year-old? How do justify that? That is a child,” the 32-year-old said. “There is a never a reason to justify Columbus police officers murdering our children.” (Initial reports from a woman who said she was Bryant’s aunt said the girl was 15.)
Fighting for change in Columbus
Despite the whiplash of watching the jury hand down Chauvin’s guilty verdict minutes after a Columbus officer shot and killed another Black person, activists including Usmani, Obey and Johnson said the future is worth fighting for.
Usmani, a social worker at elementary school in Linden, said he found the Columbus City Council’s efforts to establish an alternative crisis response unit, promising, but not sufficient.
He said he hopes the Reimagine Safety initiative will eventually establish a program in which mental health care professionals respond to non-violent 911 calls.
“As a social worker, I don’t know what I’d do if I was called into to someone having a heart attack,” he said. “For cops to be called in for someone in the middle of an addiction crisis or having a mental health episode … that’s just not what they do.”
Obey agreed, and said that the broken system of policing is rooted in not financially prioritizing the education, housing and health care above the police.
He also called for renewed unity among Columbus social justice organizations and advocates to pressure elected officials to eliminate qualified immunity, the law that protects government officials, including law enforcement officers, from civil suits.
“Police officers who may feel like they’re being indicted based off of the current time we’re living in, they must first ask themselves how they even got to that point and if they were doing what they we’re supposed to do when they signed up for a badge,” he said.
“Good officers have nothing to be scared of,” he added.
Obey said she still has hope for a better tomorrow – a cautious hope that’s shared by Johnson.
“If I didn’t have hope I wouldn’t still be out here,” Johnson said. “That’s honestly my answer. The reason why I continue to press on and continue to try and be in this fight with my brothers and sisters ... I’m in this fight and this struggle because I don’t want my six kids to be in this fight and struggle.” cdoyle@dispatch.com @cadoyle_18