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
