KING: Recent Stories Of Injustice In America You May Have Missed

One of the most dif­fi­cult aspects of my job is that so many of you keep informed about inci­dents of injus­tice in America that I sin­cere­ly strug­gle to keep up. I write at least one sto­ry a day about injus­tice in America, but that bare­ly scratch­es the sur­face of how bad things tru­ly are. I hope to use this new col­umn to track and expose even more cases.

The Indianapolis Police Shooting of Aaron Bailey

On June 29, Indianapolis police shot and killed Aaron Bailey, a 45-year-old black man, after a traf­fic stop. He was unarmed. The shoot­ing has a sin­gle eye­wit­ness, Shiwanda Ward, who recent­ly spoke to the press. In this video, she said Bailey was injured by airbags after their car crashed and that police shot him right there on the spot “for no appar­ent reason.”

Local police, and now the FBI, are inves­ti­gat­ing the shooting.

KING: Police bru­tal­i­ty fight is David ver­sus an army of Goliaths

Columbus Officer Zachary Rosen fired for stomping a handcuffed man

Columbus, Ohio, police offi­cer Zachary Rosen was involved in the 2016 shoot­ing death of Henry Green, a beloved young man in the com­mu­ni­ty. Rosen was not indict­ed by a grand jury after the shoot­ing, and activists in Columbus have fought non­stop for Rosen to be fired — some­thing that final­ly hap­pened after video showed him stomp­ing on a hand­cuffed man. Now, he must be arrest­ed. What he did to a non­vi­o­lent man in hand­cuffswas not just against depart­ment pol­i­cy, it should be clas­si­fied as an ille­gal assault. Firing him is sim­ply not enough.

Officer who shot and killed Philando Castile given $48,500 settlement

After shoot­ing and killing a man who did absolute­ly noth­ing to deserve such vio­lence, Officer Jeronimo Yanez was just giv­en a $48,500 set­tle­ment in an agree­ment to leave the depart­ment. This man — who open­ly admit­ted that he first pulled over Philando Castile because he thought his nose resem­bled that of an armed rob­bery sus­pect — shot and killed Castile for no appar­ent rea­son what­so­ev­er, then was giv­en a load of cash? Not only is that bogus, it’s a true symp­tom of just how dif­fi­cult it is to hold ter­ri­ble cops account­able. The man lit­er­al­ly just got paid after killing Philando Castile. My blood is boiling.

The Louisiana police killing of Dejuan Guillory

Early in the morn­ing of July 7, 27-year-old Dejuan Guillory, a black man, was shot and killed by police in the rur­al Louisiana town of Mamou, La. Guillory was unarmed. According to the attor­ney of the only eye­wit­ness to the shoot­ing:

“They were both on the ground. Guillory was on the ground, on his bel­ly, his hands behind his back, and the offi­cer had a gun trained at Guillory’s back, maybe a foot or two from Guillory’s body. They were still argu­ing back and forth but Guillory was on the ground as direct­ed. His hands were behind his back. Guillory said ‘Please don’t shoot me; I have three kids.’ He was not resist­ing. All of a sud­den, a shot rang out.”

KING: No, I won’t be writ­ing about black-on-black crime

According to attor­neys for the eye­wit­ness, the offi­cer, Paul LeFleur, then shot Guillory at least three more times. An autop­sy report on Guillory has not yet been released.

Police in Colorado shoot and kill six people in five days

This year is on pace to be the dead­liest mea­sured for police bru­tal­i­ty in America. In a span of just five days last week, police in Colorado shot and killed six peo­ple. To give that some per­spec­tive, in 2013, police in Finland, which has 5.3 mil­lion res­i­dents, fired six bul­lets the entire year.

Florida’s first and only black state’s attorney was racially profiled by police

Aramis Ayala is Florida’s first and only African-American state’s attor­ney — mak­ing her one of the most pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial fig­ures in their jus­tice sys­tem. That did­n’t stop police from pulling her over for flim­sy rea­sons. Watch the out­ra­geous video of the inci­dent here.