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2018 Journal Prompts part 1

Happy New Year, everyone!

Friend: cool! How many did you read this year?

BETTY SHELBY IS A MURDERER WITH A PAST HISTORY OF DRUGS, ASSAULT AND THUGGERY

Even before they killed him, the police were already composing their alibi with statements like, “That looks like a bad dude.” And, “It looks like he’s on something.”

Those statements aren’t just deeply racist stereotypes, they’re also prefabricated character assassination, meant to poison the well against Terence Crutcher, an unarmed man who’s only crime was having a broken down car and being black.

Even though he had his hands raised above his head and was complying with their commands when they shot him, the police are now trying to justify their actions by claiming they could see (from a helicopter) that Crutcher was high on drugs. If being high on drugs was an offense punishable by death, how many white people would have been executed by the police before even graduating high school?

Inflammatory statements like the those made by the police are intentionally spoken & recorded into their “official” police records to smear the victim’s name; to influence how mass media frames the story; and to pre-bias any possible grand jurors by reinforcing their (unconscious?) racial stereotypes of “Big scary black guy on drugs.”