Media Coverage

The cartoon describes the officer who pulls over the white motorist as "polite." The officer who pulls over the Black motorist has no descriptor. What the cartoon misses is that this is the same officer on different stops. It perpetuates the myth that the problem is with specific cops who are bad. The problem is with the specific behavior of each cop that changes when they encounter Black motorists.

When Black people achieve professional success, move to a nice home, and put their children in nice schools, white people can often assume that the racism in our world doesn't follow them. It is exhausting to experience it and impossible for Black people to explain it daily.

Systemic racism in policing is not only disclosed by actions against Black communities. It is also disclosed by actions not taken against white communities. We can imagine the amount of force and the number of arrests that would have happened immediately during an event like this in a Black neighborhood.

The Dispatch interviews academic experts on systemic racism to help us understand the connection between the protests spurred by police violence and the ongoing struggle against multiple racist institutions felt by the Black community.

Several local activist organizations came together to raise up the lives of young men recently lost in central Ohio and elsewhere to police violence. Members of WRJO joined the rally which was less than a week after the police killing of the 27 year old Black father, Miles Jackson, at St Ann's Hospital in Westerville. The organizations represented included: Black Liberation Movement of Central Ohio, People's Justice Project, Food not Bombs, Columbus Freedom Fund, and Showing Up for Racial Justice.

After being transported to St. Ann's Hospital by Westerville police to be checked out for possible drug use, Miles Jackson was shot to death by officers who discovered a gun in his pants. The incident was caught on multiple body worn cameras. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, part of the Attorney General's office, is investigating and promises several weeks of waiting for answers.

A quick summary of the police brutality and discrimination happening within CPD prior to mid-2018. Most of these actions/episodes have not been resolved with any satisfaction to the victims, families, or employees involved.