Civil rights lawyer and former NAACP Chairman Cornell Brooks compared the Columbus knife-wielding incident that resulted in the police shooting death of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant to a “schoolyard fight.”
“Not everything that you’re permitted to do is something that you should, in fact, do,” Brooks said of the officer’s decision to shoot Bryant. “What if it were your daughter? What if it were your child? What if it were a member of your family … in essentially a teenage fight, a schoolyard fight?”
Civil rights lawyer Cornell Brooks says the officer “within minutes” shot Ma’Khia Bryant and said she was just in a “schoolyard fight.”
He doesn’t mention the knife seen in bodycam footage. pic.twitter.com/VsoGEJf0Hg
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 22, 2021
Body camera footage from the incident appears to show Byrant wielding a knife while she charges a woman and pins her to a car, prompting the responding officer to open fire on Bryant, killing her.
In the immediate aftermath, Brooks posted a series of Tweets questioning the officer’s decision to shoot Bryant.
“As we waited for the #DerekChauvin verdict, 15 yr old #MakiaBryant was killed by police—AFTER she called them to break up a fight, according to family,” Brooks wrote in one post.
POLICE RELEASE BODY CAMERA VIDEO OF OFFICER FATALLY SHOOTING TEENAGE GIRL ARMED WITH KNIFE IN OHIO
“White mass shooters are arrested without scratch— but we’re wrong to ask ‘why is a Black child with a knife dead?’” he said in another, comparing her killing to Dylann Roof, who was sentenced to death after killing nine people in a black South Carolina church in 2015.
Brooks later defended his assessment of the incident in a subsequent Tweet, questioning why he should “apologize” for seeking the facts.
Why apologize for describing a fight among children, as a “school yard-fight?”
Why apologize for at least asking why ANY child had to die?
Why apologize for demanding facts in context—instead of immediately blaming a child for her own death? #makhiabryant https://t.co/iViXMoPFvS
— Cornell William Brooks (@CornellWBrooks) April 22, 2021
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“Why apologize for describing a fight among children, as a ‘school yard-fight?’” Brooks said. “Why apologize for at least asking why ANY child had to die? Why apologize for demanding facts in context—instead of immediately blaming a child for her own death?”
