Tamir Rice Case: 911 Dispatcher & Officer Suspended For Roles In Shooting

110 Black Men And Boys Killed By Police

UPDATED: 11:25 a.m. ET, May 5, 2021 -- The centuries-old American tradition of police shooting and killing Black males suffered an untraditional jolt in April when former cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty and convicted on all counts for murdering George Floyd by kneeling on the unarmed, handcuffed man's neck for more than nine minutes. MORE: #SayHerName: Black Women And Girls Killed By Police But it has been a quick resumption to police normalcy with multiple fatal shootings of Black people by law enforcement since the day of Chauvin's verdict. Most recently, officers with the Mesquite Police Department in Texas shot and killed Ashton Pinke on May 4 following what his family lawyer says should have been a wellness check by authorities. Instead, police claimed the 27-year-old Pinke charged at them "with a knife and a club," purportedly leaving the officers no choice but to shoot to kill. https://twitter.com/YeomansNBC5/status/1389775158919979009?s=20   Read more about Pinke's shooting by clicking here. Pinke's name joins a long list of other Black men and boys killed by the police, including but certainly not limited to: Tamir Rice; Botham Shem Jean; E.J. Bradford; and Michael Brown. But two of the most recent names that can tragically be included in this deadly equation are Michael Dean, a 28-year-old father who police shot in the head on Dec. 3, 2019, and Jamee Johnson, a 22-year-old HBCU student who police shot to death after a questionable traffic stop on Dec. 14, 2019. One of the most distressing parts of this seemingly nonstop string of police killings of Black people is the fact that more times than not, the officer involved in the shooting can hide behind the claim that they feared for their lives -- even if the victim was shot in the back, as has become the case for so many deadly episodes involving law enforcement. In a handful of those cases -- such as Antwon Rose, a 13-year-old boy killed in Pittsburgh, and Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old killed in Sacramento, both of whom were unarmed -- the officers either avoided being criminally charged altogether or were acquitted despite damning evidence that the cops' lives were not threatened and there was no cause for them to resort to lethal force or any violence for that matter. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who has been retained in so many of these cases, described the above scenarios in his new book, "Open Season," as the "genocide" of Black people. As NewsOne continues covering these shootings that so often go ignored by mainstream media, the below running list (in no certain order) of Black men and boys who have been shot and killed by police under suspicious circumstances can serve as a tragic reminder of the dangers Black and brown citizens face upon being born into a world of hate that has branded them as suspects since birth. Scroll down to learn more about the Black men and boys who have lost their lives to police violence.