Archive for September, 2014

On June 14, 2012,

a few weeks after

her 23rd birthday,

SHANTEL DAVIS

was gunned down

by PHILLIP ATKINS,

on the corner
of
East 38th Street
&
Church Avenue,

in East Flatbush,

Brooklyn.

She was unarmed.

On the day of the shooting,
the details of Phillip’s
use of deadly force
were unclear.

In the wake

of the killing

the press
focused on

Shantel’s
police record.

Phillip’s
record as police

did not garner
equal attention.

The vilification

of victims of police

use of deadly force

is a mainstay

of today’s

major news outlets.

Is the goal of this
shameless habitual slander
to make us all more accepting
of police killings?

As if to say, well,
he or she is better off dead?

Our courts are criminally inefficient
and pathologically dysfunctional,
but we are all entitled to due process,
to the right to being proven guilty –

even those of us who are poor
and under-represented.

2 years later,

21 MISSING

visited the corner

where Shantel was killed.

The small shrine,

which had bloomed there

shortly after the incident,

had long since vanished.

Our plan was to

“re-memorialize” Shantel

by spray-painting

a white homicide outline

at the scene of the crime.

Inspired, in part,

by the white bicycles

used to remind us

of the deaths

of bicyclists in traffic,

we are creating

visual reminders

in places

where people

have been killed

by

the

NYPD.

Why focus on police killings?

The idea is not
to point the finger of judgement,
but to open the fist
which suffocates
the wisdom of the heart.

We want to keep these people
alive
in our collective memory,
and to invite the movement
towards
preventing
unnecessary deaths of this kind.

One of our arresting officers
asked us if they would be
finding these outlines everywhere.

We did not respond.

The question floated in the air
like sulfur.

(Antoine White was killed
at this spot in Bushwick
by Detective Benjamin Cintron
on January 29, 2012)

There are no
official statistics
of police killings
available anywhere
in
the
United States of America.

Is not the role of the police
TO SERVE AND PROTECT,
to be the FINEST?

What exactly is JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE?

Ask:
Antoine White, Kimani Gray, Ramarley Graham,
Duane Brown, and so on, and so on……………………………………………

E
r
i
c
G
a
r
n
e
r

Michael Brown

Eleanor Bumpurs

Sean

Bell

Amadou

Diallo

Michael

Stewart

May they all
rest in peace.

May we all stop
adding to their numbers.

21 MISSING
1 MISSING
MISSING
ISSING
SSING
SING
ING
NG
G