Masonique Saunders

The is no good reason for me to know the name Julius Tate Jr. There is one bad reason. Julius Tate Jr. was a teenager out with his girlfriend in his own neighborhood. He was a young guy enjoying his life and I am some older guy that lives alone and writes detailed articles on technology and surveillance. He had excited young people things to be doing and I have boring old nerd guy stuff to be forever behind on. He will never know my name because the life he was enjoying was ended by a Columbus SWAT officer without warning while he was unarmed and accused of no crime.

The protest during gallery hop on May 4th was a great many things. It was energetic. It was determined. It was fairly restrained on the part of everyone but the police and a lone lunatic in a track suit and a MAGA hat stumbling around raving about America being great. What it was not, legally or in reality, was a riot. Yet four, and exactly four, demonstrators were charged in order to make it a riot.

When a teenager dies in a hail of police bullets family and community are traumatized. When that happens in Columbus the teenager is invariably not actually a danger to the police who execute them. After the murder, the City of Columbus is not content to merely smear the victim and hide behind attorneys, the police union, and their badges. There is a developing escalation, where any witnesses and t to the murder and their families are prosecuted. This is what is happening in the wake of the police killings of both Julius Tate Jr.