Police shootings in Columbus, Ohio, are in the spotlight after the death of Ma’Khia Bryant. Everyone can name Bryant, but fewer could name any of the victims of the record number of homicides in the city.
The New York Times reports that “Columbus grapples with police shootings that have taken black lives,” with only a passing mention of the record number of homicides the city has seen going back to last year. In Columbus, 26 people have been shot and killed by police officers going back to 2016. Four have been killed in the last four months.
Meanwhile, Columbus saw a record number of homicides last year, with 175. In four months this year, the city has seen 60 more, double the amount it saw during the same period last year. Roughly 75% of the city’s homicide victims in 2020 were black, but national media outlets probably couldn’t name any of them. After all, we know Bryant’s name but still not the name of the woman she almost killed. She would have just been another number added to the record homicide statistics.
You can find a grim list of most of the victims at the Columbus Dispatch. While 16-year-old Bryant gets all the headlines for being shot while attempting to stab a woman to death, other names don’t quite get the national mourning, like 16-year-old Hussein Abdi. Or 14-year-old Ciara Bray. Or 2-year-olds Ro’mere Harris and Jamir Jones.
Nine of the 10 people killed by police in the entire state of Ohio this year were armed, whether with a knife like Bryant or with a gun. The 10th threatened officers with a gun he didn’t have. Of the 23 in the state killed by police in 2020, only one was unarmed: Andre Hill, killed in Columbus. The officer who shot him is facing criminal charges.
Activists and media outlets have moved on from Minneapolis after the guilty verdicts handed down against former police officer Derek Chauvin. Their work there is done. The city is left to deal with a 21% surge in violent crimes and its second-worst year for homicides without them. These same people don’t seem to care about the 235 homicide victims in Columbus over the last 16 months. They probably won’t care about the homicides that follow either.
Bryant was not the victim of “systemic racism” in the police. The “woman in pink” she almost stabbed to death would have been the victim of Bryant. No national media outlets would be in Columbus to talk about the violence facing its residents. No activists would be there to demand change. No privileged college students would march to mourn her. None of them did for the 235 homicide victims in the city, and they won’t do it for number 236 either.
