A man drives his companion down a Cleveland street, and before he knows it police sirens bite into the night air, sending a chill down his spine.
He pushes his foot down on the accelerator trying to avoid this madness. Little does he know that within minutes, he and his companion will be shown their last vision in life, 137 shots fired into them, courtesy of Cleveland police.
This happened in 2012, on Saturday. A judge there acquitted a cop involved in that shooting for leaping atop the car’s hood and emptying his semi-automatic, 15 shots into the bullet-ridden bodies of the two occupants of the car. 137 shots into a car of unarmed people, said to be sparked by a car’s backfire.
Legal? Justifiable? The two had traces of drugs in their system, the judge noted. They were thus expendable.
137 shots, it’s ok, no biggie, boys will be boys, right?
The law is not but opinion, whether the judge’s or anyone else’s, for that matter.
In the season of Ferguson, when the youth are in the streets yelling “Black Lives Matter,” we learn that this is more aspiration than reality. It is a bitter hope in the cold kingdom of the law, for today Black lives don’t matter a bit.
