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Just as the guilty verdict was about to be read in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, police in Ohio shot and killed a Black teenager during a confrontation.
The shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, who was swinging a knife during a fight with another person in Columbus, is in some ways more representative of how Black and other people of color are killed during police encounters than the death of George Floyd, pinned to the ground by Chauvin and captured on video for all the world to see.
Unlike Chauvin’s case, many killings by police involve a decision to shoot in a heated moment and are notoriously difficult to prosecute even when they spark grief and outrage. Juries have tended to give officers the benefit of the doubt when they say they acted in a life-or-death situation.
Apr 22, 2021
In an image from police bodycam video that the Columbus Police Department played during a news conference Tuesday night, April 20, 2021, a teenage girl, foreground, appears to wield a knife during an altercation before being shot by a police officer Tuesday, April 20, 2021, in Columbus, Ohio. Police shot and the girl just as the verdict was being announced in the trial for the killing of George Floyd. State law allows police to use deadly force to protect themselves or others, and investigators will determine whether this shooting was such an instance, Interim Police Chief Michael Woods said at the news conference. (Columbus Police Department via WSYX-TV via AP)
We Canât Stop Now : Boston Protesters March For Racial Justice In The Wake Of Chauvin Verdict
Protester Sierra Wilcox, 31, from the South Shore, demonstrates at a march against police brutality outside the Boston Police Headquarters in Roxbury on April 21, 2021.
Tori Bedford / GBH News
As rain clouds threatened to break and thunder rumbled in the distance, Monica Cannon-Grant, a local activist and founder of social justice nonprofit Violence in Boston, vowed to stick it out.
âWe re going to be out here regardless,â she said as a crowd began to form Wednesday outside a nearby Boston Police District station. âBlack folks are dying in the rain, the snow, the sunshine, on a Sunday, it doesn t matter. So we have an obligation to show up not just for the Floyd family, but for the people in the city of Boston who get killed on a regular basis.â
Daniel Prude and George Floyd died less than two months apart after encounters with police officers in two different American cities.
Rochester police officers pinned Prude, naked and handcuffed, to the ground on a frigid street on March 23, 2020. Prude lost oxygen to his brain and died a week later.
Floyd died that May while Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin restrained Floyd, who was handcuffed. Chauvin pressed his knee forcefully on Floyd s neck for more than nine minutes.
Those moments between the Black men and the white police officers were captured on video, triggering a wave of social justice protests. Floyd s and Prude s names intertwined in chants demanding accountability and reform in policing.