Our Lives Matter

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Tamir Rice was only 12 years old when police fatally shot him November 22, 2014 in Cleveland, OH. He's pretty much the perfect illustration of why you should think twice before calling the cops on someone to "help." Tamir had a toy gun he was playing with in a park and although the dispatcher was told the gun looked fake and he was just a child, the only information that was relayed to the cops was that it was a black person with a gun. The cop who shot Tamir was declared mentally unfit for duty by his last department and hid the information from the Cleveland PD. Although he attempted to lie by saying the boy shot first, the video shows that he didn't even wait for the car to stop or Tamir to show his hands before he opened fire. His own partner also didn't corroborate the story.

Tamir's older sister was also handcuffed next to her dying brother when she ran to help him, and neither officer bothered to administer first aid. Were either of the officers indicted? What do you think?

I'm happy to be returning to this project. However, I really have my work cut out for me. There are so many more portraits I'm planning to do in the Our Lives Matter series and so many more terrible incidents that have happened since. I recently had my own altercation with police that really communicated to me how out of touch police are with the people they're meant to protect and serve, and how easily it can turn fatal. Tamir was described as a good kid "who liked to draw, play basketball, and perform in the school's drum line." Because of an unstable and prejudiced police force, he never will again.

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This beautiful woman is Rekia Boyd, only 22 years old and walking down the street with her friends when an off-duty cop drove up, argued with them about the noise they were making, and shot her in the head. In a remarkable miscarriage of justice, the cop was cleared of all charges because the judge decided it wasn't 'involuntary manslaughter' but exactly what it was: straight-up murder-- and unfortunately he hadn't been formally charged with that.

That guy is still walking around, but on March 21, 2012 Rekia's vibrant life ended. Her brother has said that she had a knack for making friends anywhere, that she was a good cook, and loved the color yellow. She's been described as the girl who 'woke the world up' and could 'light up a room.' And she should never be forgotten.

This portrait took me a long time, to capture the beauty of the original photograph. I also have no practice in painting leaves.

(digital painting)

[ourlivesmatterart]

OLM 4: Philando Castile

One of the more famous cases. Most of you will probably remember Castile through his fiancee's brave livestreaming of his death on July 6, 2016 as he lay bleeding out next to her in their car, their four-year-old daughter in the backseat. Castile himself was only 32, and worked as a nutrition supervisor at a Montessori school in St. Paul, MN.

Castile was careful in his interaction with Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed him. He had a license to carry a firearm and let Yanez know that. Unfortunately that seemed to just give Yanez more cause to be nervous and he fatally shot Castile while the man was putting his hands up.

Police shadiness as to the sequence of events followed, as it usually does. According to Yanez he'd stopped Castile's car because he resembled a robbery suspect due to his 'wide nose'. However, the protocol required for a felony stop was not followed and Castile's fiancee maintained that they'd been stopped for a broken taillight.

Philando had his whole life ahead of him, but an officer of the law who should have kept his cool got nervous. Now his daughter and fiancee have to live with the memory of witnessing his death right in front of them. Yanez is going to trial this May for second-degree manslaughter. It's not nearly enough.

(digital painting)

[ourlivesmatterart]

Our Lives Matter #3: Kathryn Johnston | Ansate Jones on Patreon

Official Post from Ansate Jones: On November 21 2006 in Atlanta, three plainclothes police officers entered 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston's home using a 'no-knock warrant' on a drug raid. Startled by the intrusion and not immediately recognizing them as police officers, she fired a rusty revolver once above their heads, and they res

On November 21 2006 in Atlanta, three plainclothes police officers entered 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston's home using a 'no-knock warrant' on a drug raid. Startled by the intrusion and not immediately recognizing them as police officers, she fired a rusty revolver once above their heads, and they responded by firing wildly 39 times (only 5 or 6 hit her, and several other rounds hit their fellow officers). After she was killed one of them planted marijuana at the scene. Later it was discovered that their warrant was obtained under false pretenses, their informant denying that he'd bought drugs at her house. All three officers were sentenced for manslaughter.

The really stupid part of this story, though, is what happened almost exactly two months before this incident and less than two miles away: an 80-year-old black woman named Frances Thompson was startled by three plainclothes cops breaking down her door looking for evidence of drug deals. Sound familiar? Luckily, they managed not to shoot her, and of course they did not find anything. The fact that Atlanta PD could create the same botched drug raid situation twice in the same general area within the same few months is astounding and a testament to how badly these sorts of maneuvers are handled in poorer, blacker neighborhoods.

Kathryn was a fixture in her community, and mourned by many. When it gets so bad that three grown, supposedly trained men invade an old grandmother's home in the night and still feel threatened enough by her to shoot at her almost 40 times... it truly does make you wonder what the hell is going on here.

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Our Lives Matter #2: Walter Scott

Walter Scott was killed by a police officer after a routine traffic stop for a broken brake light in 2015. They have another term for this kind of stop-- Driving While Black. The cop claimed that Scott grabbed his Taser and that he feared for his life. A bystander's video showed otherwise: the cop shot Scott multiple times in the back while he was fleeing, and then planted the Taser next to him. This is one of the few cases in which the officer was actually indicted of murder-- a victory stemming from a tragic incident that never needed to escalate to such a level.

Walter was a 50-year-old forklift operator who was studying to be a massage therapist. He'd also spent two years in the Coast Guard. He was still discovering his place in life when racism ended it. 

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I'm pretty excited to have started, finally, on a project I've been thinking about for a few months now called Our Lives Matter. I want to honor POC victims of unwarranted police violence by drawing portraits of them. 

My criteria:

-subdued, unarmed or weapon not drawn

-killed by police or during police action

They don't have to be 'innocent' or 'guilty'-- only victims of police overreaction, neglect, incompetence, and/or brutality. I've already found over 50 cases just by using Google Image Search, of all things. Even just looking at their pictures has made me aware of what a loss their families and communities have suffered, and I'm hoping it opens a lot of other's eyes too. I'm purposely looking to use pictures of the victims smiling or with their loved ones rather than the mug shots the news so often parades out when tragedy strikes. I want to portray these people as individuals who had lives that mattered, not just statistics.

Aiyana Jones is my first portrait in this series. I picked her not only because I happened to have two really nice family photos of her to work from, but because her beautiful personality came across so well in them. 

Aiyana was a 7-year-old girl shot in the head during a raid on her grandmother's duplex by a Detroit Special Response Team in 2010. The police officer responsible was never brought to justice, nor the chief who ordered the unnecessary and irresponsible overuse of force.

(via Our Lives Matter #1: Aiyana Jones | Ansate Jones on Patreon)