If the undercover police officer who killed Prince Carmen Jones in Virginia in 2000 had been indicted, would anything be different today?
Prince Jones, a Howard University student, was driving home to his fiancé and daughter that night. What he didn’t know was that he was being followed by police because his Jeep looked like the Jeep of a man police were looking for. An innocent man was killed that night, and in the years that followed, there was no justice served and no apology made.
Or if Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown, had been indicted, would anything be different today? Or the policeman who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice and stood by for four minutes waiting for more police to arrive, without giving him any first aid, as the boy bled to death – if that officer had been indicted, would anything be different today?
Or the officer who put Eric Garner in a chokehold … or the officer who killed David Joseph, an unarmed black teenager running down the street in Austin. If either of them had been indicted, would that have changed anything?
It’s a sad day for justice when people who enforce our laws appear to be beyond the reach of the law. And it’s a tragedy, bringing great suffering not only to the United States but to the whole world, when our courts of law uphold racist and violent inclinations.
Nina Weyl
Amherst