On February 23, a young black man was fatally shot in Brunswick, Georgia. When retired police detective Gregory McMichael saw 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery on his regular jog, he believed that Arbery looked like a suspect in recent robberies around the neighborhood. McMichael promptly called his son, Travis McMichael, and they armed themselves with a handgun and shotgun before they pursued Arbery in their truck. According to the police report, Gregory McMichael shouted "stop, we want to talk to you" to Arbery before they pulled up beside him in their truck. Within minutes, Travis shot Arbery out of claimed self-defense.
Despite calling law enforcement when he first spotted Arbery, McMichael still felt the need to pursue Arbery. When the 911 operator asked what Arbery was doing wrong, McMichael simply said "he's a black man running down our road." As for the alleged burglaries, no such string of crimes was reported in the weeks prior to the shooting. However, the surveillance system of an under-construction home did capture at least four short clips of a man who appeared to be Arbery "coming onto his property" on February 23; clips show him "trespassing" onto the property but committing no other crimes.
It was not until May 7 that Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation following public outrage from the release of a video showing Arbery's fatal pursuit. For almost two months, Arbery's family had to mourn his death with no closure. Had his story not made national headlines, it is very possible that the McMichaels would have never been punished despite committing blatantly racist and unprovoked crime. Although the time of explicit Jim Crow laws has passed into our nation's history, discrimination and oppression of African-Americans very much continues into the twenty-first century. Unless we push for just punishment against racist acts of violence, America will continue to see more tragedies like those of Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and countless others. Black Lives Matter!
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