Welcome back to The Invisible. I apologize for the long hiatus due to school, applications, and an intense extracurricular workload. However, this episode is an important and long-awaited one, regarding the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
With this edition, I hope to raise awareness of some less-covered recent instances of police brutality by focusing on the recent cases of Landon Eastep and James Lowery, efforts for whom are spearheaded largely by the renowned civil rights attorney, Mr. Benjamin Crump. But first, I want to open with a discussion of the American justice system and punishment after the passage of the 13th amendment, based on the Netflix documentary 13.
After the Civil War, the newly reunited national government passed the 13th amendment, the text of which reads:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
This clause laid the groundwork for the next reincarnation of systematic racial oppression in the United States. Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, contends in her book that caste systems have manifested themselves in different forms throughout US history, such as slavery progressing to Jim Crow segregation, which has now evolved into the failings of the criminal justice system. After the Civil War, the Southern economy was decimated without enslaved people to operate the large plantations, so, the strategy to build Southern infrastructure became re-enslaving newly emancipated slaves on inflated charges and false allegations. As Black people were systematically targeted by police, societies desperate to regain free labor began circulating and constructing images of crime linked to Black communities in order to justify the racially biased policing and sentencing of the times. This strategy was employed again and again throughout history, from the "tough on crime" campaigns to the infamous War on Drugs. With mounting police militarization, rising incarceration rates and profit incentives for private prison corporations, and rampant felony disenfranchisement, a deeper analysis of the history of the criminal justice system reveals deeply intrenched racial bias at every step of the process.
With this context in mind, police brutality and excessive use of force is one of the most dangerous consequences of this model of policing, as Blackness has been unjustly and deliberately tied with criminality by systems of oppression and police are generally divorced from any accountability. Therefore, I want to bring attention to two recent cases of such excessive use of force that have received limited coverage.
The first is the fatal shooting of Landon Eastep, a 37 year old Nashville resident, on the I-65 freeway. According to Tennessean:
Nashville elected officials continue to issue statements on the fatal police shooting of a man on Interstate 65 Thursday. Many share the same message: This can't happen again. Nine law enforcement officers opened fire on 37-year-old Landon Eastep as he stood in the middle of I-65 holding a box cutter and an unidentified "metal, cylindrical object" that law enforcement officials later said was not a gun.
Although investigations continue, the facts of the case are as follows: Mr. Eastep was walking alongside Interstate 65 with a box cutter and appeared troubled to a passing off-duty police officer. It was determined that Mr. Eastep was unarmed, but multiple and repeated shots fired by the 9 armed officers demonstrates the unreasonable and excessive use of force in this scenario.
Another such incident is the shooting of James Lowery. When responding to 911 calls regarding a domestic violence case, officers alleged that Mr. Lowery "matched the description" of the suspect and that he fled the scene and assaulted another officer, at which point a firearm was discharged. However, given the lack of body-worn camera evidence made available, the autopsy results, and the strong possibility of a case of mistaken identity, noted Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump has filed a public records lawsuit against the Titusville Police Department.
The families and victims of these incidents of excessive force deserve justice. However, given the failings of the justice system to prosecute Kyle Rittenhouse or the officers involved in the murder of Breonna Taylor, it is imperative that public attention and pressure be placed on the relevant departments.
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