The relatives of Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling and other black Americans who have been tragically killed by police brutality have describe the brutal road ahead for the Black Lives Matter movement, but have also voiced hope. Tara Pilkington reports.
It has been almost six years since 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot to death by a white police officer in a park in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2014. Tamir at the time had been playing with a toy gun and the officers involved faced no criminal charges. One was suspended for 10 days, the officer who killed Tamir was fired for lying on his job application but was later rehired by another police department.
His mother, Samaria Rice, has commented on the current Black Lives Matter protests saying: “I’m actually not thinking about any of these protests. I’m thinking about: how can the police departments be dismantled? How can their policies and laws be dismantled?”
She added: “I don’t understand how this is allowed to continue…There’s a killer virus out there, and the police are still killing during a pandemic.”
Sybrina Fulton, whose unarmed 17-year-old son Trayvon was shot to death in 2012 by a neighbourhood watch volunteer (George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted of all charges) has said: “I think people have had enough”.
Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, has said that she was keeping her faith in young protesters: “They’re already passionate. They’re already fearless. I would just tell them to keep moving forward”