When George Floyd was murdered in a most gruesome manner by police, many bootlicking police supporters began to dig into his past to revive aspects of his criminal record so as to tarnish his reputation and justify the way in which he lost his life. Still, much of the world knew better than to be distracted by such narratives and ultimately, his death was the catalyst for a wave of activism across the states calling ultimately for the abolition of the police and prison systems.
From this, many aspects of police reform were brought forward by centrist and liberal political leaders as a sort of compromise to the community while negotiating with racists and authoritarian nationalists as an attempt to prevent such early deaths, including in Colorado and Denver. Despite those efforts, we recently witnessed the murder of an unhoused queer person in broad daylight by a supposedly reformed police force. Clearly the system is still functioning as originally intended – by victimizing, sometimes fatally, the most vulnerable demographics in our society.
When George Floyd was murdered in a most gruesome manner by police, many bootlicking police supporters began to dig into his past to revive aspects of his criminal record so as to tarnish his reputation and justify the way in which he lost his life. Still, much of the world knew better than to be distracted by such narratives and ultimately, his death was the catalyst for a wave of activism across the states calling ultimately for the abolition of the police and prison systems.
A known houseless hate group that publishes poverty porn in a perverse way of shaming at-risk, poor people on social media has recently posted information damning the individual who the police happened to target and kill that day. In doing so, they hope to brush the incident under the rug as some sort of righteous killing. The fact of the matter is that the police have no role in taking someone’s life that they deem invaluable, nor were they acting that day with any knowledge of the victim’s past. They were responding to a call by a community member who had stated clearly that she did not feel threatened by the behavior of the individual, but was simply worried that someone was in a traffic intersection having a mental health episode. If only we had another number for her to call that would’ve sent individuals trained in de-escalation, trauma-informed response, intersectionality, cultural sensitivity, and other trainings, the likes of which the police clearly lack.
Some seem to believe that three fully armed, geared-up, and supposedly trained, tax payer-employed officers versus one person in the throes of a mental health crisis with a knife was a fair fight, and that the officers felt threatened despite the fact that the civilian who initially reported the incident did not. We have seen police officers take down white male mass shooters who are armed and in full gear, who had just finished murdering scores of civilians, still be brought in to serve sentences by being shot in the leg. This shows that the police are not meant to be judge, jury, and executioner – but become so when they encounter black and hispanic queer bodies versus white bodies. We must be honest in how there is a clear difference in approach when someone is a person of color, queer, and poor.
Additionally, the victim’s identity was called into question as the fear-mongering, houseless hating social media page published supposed aliases of the victim and suggested that despite witnesses’ direct statements and even City press conferences referring to the victim as a woman, that such legal paperwork should hold more worth than those in the community who were there. Given that she was assigned male at birth but outwardly presenting herself to the world as a woman, and you can’t confirm gender identity with the deceased, we formerly used the term womxn to be gender inclusive to all possible queer identities – including gender fluid and nonbinary. The police chief’s choice to respect her gender as a woman in the press conference but not mention her trans identity was particularly impactful given that it is pride month and Pride weekend was one week away. For these reasons, we continue to identify her as a her and acknowledge the disproportional amount of police violence, let alone partner or community violence, experienced by the queer and particularly the trans community.
All that being said, attend tonight at 5:30pm if you believe that cops shouldn’t have the right to kill people because they decide they want to, or because it’s easier or quicker than de-escalation. Given the huge amount of investment Denver continues to put into police training and increasing the police force, we are right to have higher expectations – and the bar is already pretty low when you’re solely asking that individuals not be gunned down in the streets.
You’d better hope you’re never caught in the middle of the road being black or brown, or suffering from mental illness, or looking like you struggle to pay rent or mortgage somewhere, or all three… You might find yourself dead in the ground with people justifying your early execution by digging up your past, and telling themselves that it could never happen to them…
We’ll see you at 5:30pm tonight at Broadway and Lawrence, where it happened this time.
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