As I woke up on Tuesday morning to get ready for class, I instinctively grabbed my phone to browse through social media (as you do). While scrolling through Twitter I saw the number one trending topic: #TerenceCrutcher.
I already knew why his name was trending.
I already knew what was waiting behind the hash tag, another black man shot and killed by police. On September 16, 2016 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, officer Betty Shelby was responding to another call and came across Crutcher and his stalled SUV. According to Shelby’s lawyer, Crutcher was not cooperating and reinforcement was called. It was reported that Crutcher continued to disobey commands from the police and reached into his SUV, which resulted in a taser being deployed by officer Tyler Turnbough and Shelby firing a shot, killing Crutcher.
As I scrolled through tweets and articles I quickly came across a videos of the shooting, both from an officer’s dash cam and from helicopter view. In both videos, Crutcher clearly has his hands up and is slowly making his way towards the SUV while four officers are no less than three feet away from him. You then see Crutcher fall to the ground, motionless. All officers back away from his body and nobody checks on him for minutes. No aid is administered. No attempt to save his life is made.
I then watched from the helicopter view (Shelby’s husband, a fellow police officer, just happened to be in the helicopter hovering over the situation that day along with another officer). The unidentified officer then says Crutcher “looks like a bad dude, he might be on something” (how this is clear from the helicopter view is unbeknownst to me, but as you will). Upon further investigation, it’s revealed Crutcher was unarmed. Turnbough and Shelby are currently on paid vacat- I mean, leave.
I can’t recall how many times I’ve woken up to a new name trending on Twitter due to police brutality. It was something all too common. There was also another common denominator:
The all lives matter club was absent yet again, and their silence was DEAFENING. I saw not ONE “all lives matter” tweet on my timeline, none of the all lives matter club members were talking about Terence Crutcher at all. If all lives truly do matter, why weren’t they calling for justice? It reminded me of their silence when unarmed Philando Castile was shot and killed earlier this year in July. It reminded me of their silence when Charles Kinsey was shot while sitting down with his hands up trying to protect his autistic patient. It reminded me of their silence when no officers were charged in the shooting death of twelve year old Tamir Rice when he was at the park playing. It reminded me of their silence when white teenager Dylan Noble was shot and killed by police, and the Black Lives Matter movement called for justice to be served for his murder.
The jig is up.
Clearly, all lives matter. Water is wet. The all lives matter unit is only present and vocal to hush us when we’re letting people know “Black Lives Matter”. Aside from the fact that all lives matter was created to invalidate the BLM movement, the all lives matter party is increasingly silent while people of all races continue to face police brutality. In a perfect world, all lives DO matter and people are not treated unfairly due to their race, sexuality, gender, etc. Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Until we are I ask the all lives matter “movement” to stop trying to hide their prejudice and selective outrage with a fake fantasy for universal justice: or, to just stay quiet consistently. Thank you in advance.