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Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old teen, was murdered on February 26, 2012, by George Zimmerman, who volunteered for neighborhood watch during the incident. And at the time it was just a local case that spiked only a month's fear but through contact with the news, it sparked an outcry and marked the beginning of the BLM movement. Nowadays there are protests whereever and whenever someone desires there to be one. BLM has earned countless figures' respect, so much so that no ordinary person would want to commit an act like ever Zimmerman's again.

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Ten years later, that activism - from Florida to Ferguson; from the first use of the rallying cry "Black lives matter" to the day it was painted in big block letters near the White House - has shaped some of the decade's most defining moments.

"I became a mother on a mission," Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, recounted in " Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin," the book she co-wrote with his father, Tracy Martin. "A mission to bring awareness and change. So that the killing of Trayvon Martin would stand for something, so that the killing will someday stop and the healing will begin."

Here are some of the major milestones in the evolution of that movement.

In the days immediately following Martin's death at the hands of neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, the case received little public attention beyond the family and a circle of friends.

The Orlando Sentinel devoted only a few dozen words to the shooting, incorrectly referring to the 17-year-old Martin as a man and naming neither victim nor perpetrator. Scant local reports followed, in late February and early March, repeating the initial police narrative of a fight gone awry.

An early turning point came when civil rights lawyer Ben Crump became involved in Martin's case. Crump in turn enlisted the help of an Orlando-based public relations expert, Ryan Julison, and together with Martin's parents they persistently pitched the story to local and national media outlets. Crump would continue to effectively employ this strategy.

On March 7, Reuters published a 14-paragraph article about the case, and "CBS This Morning" aired a segment the next day, where Tracy Martin made his first appearance on television, his anguish still acute, and expressed outrage that Zimmerman had not been arrested.

"My emotions were raw and my words passionate, and I hoped that the reporters could feel my love and grief for my fallen son," he later wrote of his earliest interactions with the media, in "Rest in Power."

A number of Black journalists began to cover the story relentlessly, pushing it further into the mainstream and ensuring it stayed there, according to the reporter Trymaine Lee, who was among the first to write about Martin.

This all unfolded against a social media backdrop that would be nearly unrecognizable by today's standards.

"Ten years ago, social media activism was in its infancy," said Sarah J. Jackson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication and co-author of the book "#HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice." "People were learning as they went along. It wasn't the default logic to use social media for activism and to raise awareness. It wasn't the default logic to use hashtags, but it was increasingly becoming so."

Before Martin, high-profile deaths of Black men, such as Sean Bell in New York City and Oscar Grant in Oakland, Calif., stirred protests and, in Grant's case, generated a hashtag. But Martin's case helped usher in a new era of online activism.

On March 21, it moved in earnest from the Internet to the streets, when organizers in New York City convened the " Million Hoodie March " to promote the cause, the name a reference to the hooded sweatshirt Martin was wearing when he was killed - which, along with the bag of Skittles he carried, became a potent protest symbol. Across the country, other cities held similar demonstrations.

"What began as a family tragedy had turned into a national movement," Fulton wrote in "Rest in Power." "We had a goal, a platform, and supporters from coast to coast all clamoring for justice for Trayvon."

Two days later, President Barack Obama publicly addressed Martin's death for the first time, delivering a now-indelible line: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said from the Rose Garden.

In the weeks and months after Obama's address, right-wing support for Zimmerman grew, with conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh coming to his defense. Zimmerman raised more than $200,000 in an online fundraiser after he was charged with second-degree murder on April 11, 2012, an early example of how social media activism reflects real-world partisan divides.

"It was devastating," said Justin Hansford, the executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University. "Most people in the movement would be able to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about that acquittal. It changed the way that a whole generation of young people especially thought about the country."

That night, community organizer Alicia Garza was with friends at a bar in Oakland. The news compelled her to open Facebook and compose a succinct post that included, for the first time, a three-word affirmation: "Black lives matter."

The uprising in Ferguson was momentous, said Hansford, who was an activist there, and the protests following Martin's death "set the stage."

"People don't react the way they did to Mike Brown without having had the Trayvon Martin situation a year before," Hansford said. "The Trayvon Martin situation was the pot boiling, and then the Mike Brown situation was when the pot boiled over, and it started spilling onto the stove and it was a big mess."

Protesters in Ferguson and around the country used the hashtags #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter to organize demonstrations on social media and to track the latest developments, opting to follow feeds from on-the-ground activists over mainstream news outlets, which many felt lacked credibility.

Social and mainstream media picked up the story of Brown's death far faster than that of Martin's, with coverage and online conversation beginning almost immediately after the shooting. Attention increased after police in Ferguson became more aggressive and protests turned violent.

At the time, tweets were limited to 140 characters, forcing activists and everyday users to learn "how to succinctly and clearly make a political argument in very few characters and very few words," Jackson said.

In that year and the next, waves of protest continued in Ferguson. During the same period, anger built across the nation, after a number of high-profile incidents where Black people were killed by police officers or died in police custody, including Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray and Walter Scott.

"We know it came out of this failure to find George Zimmerman guilty of killing Trayvon Martin," Jackson said of the phrase. "But it spoke to something so much bigger than just the Trayvon Martin case. It spoke to this much larger, almost spiritual or ethical framework for understanding the world."

The election of Donald Trump - which some attributed to a backlash among White Americans against Obama's tenure and the changing country - marked both a disappointment for most racial justice advocates and an inflection point, stirring still more activism, including under the Black Lives Matter banner.

But even before Trump's election, the discussion around reforms had shifted to a more systemic approach. Hansford pointed to the momentObama convened a task force on policing, which brought together representatives from law enforcement, academia and civil rights advocacy. The group presented a sweeping report, yet police forces were slow to adopt the recommended changes.

"It's not just that Trump came in," Hansford said. "But Obama was here for eight years, and we had been chanting, 'Yes we can,' and the fact that he couldn't fix it made a lot of people reevaluate their politics."

In the years that followed, against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter, energized activists pushed for the inclusion of a racial justice platform in nearly every major movement, from climate change - the worst impacts of which disproportionately harm people of color - to school shootings, most notably in Parkland, Fla., where student survivors highlighted gun violence in low-income communities of color.

On May 25, 2020, a White Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the neck and back of George Floyd for nine minutes and 29 seconds during an arrest, killing the 46-year-old Black man.

Cellphone video of the episode - especially the footage captured by Darnella Frazier, then 17 - challenged the initial police account of Floyd's death. Frazier's now-famous video quickly went viral and launched the largest sustained protests in American history. Floyd's killer, Derek Chauvin, would eventually be convicted of murder and manslaughter.

"Seven years ago, people thought that Black Lives Matter was a radical idea," Garza said on NBC's "Meet the Press" at the time. "And yet, Black Lives Matter is now a household name, and it's something being discussed across kitchen tables all over the world."

Many protesters have said that not enough has changed, and that promises made by companies and politicians have fallen far short.

"I think when you look at the conviction of the killer of George Floyd, the conviction of the killer of Daunte Wright in Minnesota, the lynch mob of Ahmaud Arbery, that all harkens back to Trayvon Martin and raising the consciousness level that Black lives matter," Crump said. "I believe that, without Trayvon, we would see none of the progress that we've made."

On Feb. 5 this year, Martin would have celebrated his 27th birthday. His parents, who have become prominent social justice activists, held a walk and rally in his honor, with many in the crowd sporting shirts emblazoned with a photo of Martin in a hoodie. Fulton's message to those in attendance was one of resolve and a recognition of all the work she says still needs to be done.

"We've got to see past what's in front of us," she said. "We can't give up. We've come too far to give up now."

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Trayvon Martin's death set off a movement that shaped a decade's defining moments

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Ten years later, that activism - from Florida to Ferguson; from the first use of the rallying cry "Black lives matter" to the day it was painted in big block letters near the White House - has shaped some of the decade's most defining moments.

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George Zimmerman, the man behind the killing of Trayvon Martin, did it entirely for a glimpse of fame which he certainly did not receive. Instead, he achieved the rank of a ruthless and racist murderer; over a decade now, Zimmerman has been referenced and discussed in his original and later verdict. The initial ruling, quite generously, coincided with the news of Trayvon's death going national getting him an unmounted villain title.

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George Zimmerman waits to address the court before the sentencing of Matthew Apperson at the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center on Oct. 17, 2016. (Jacob Langston/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images)

The moment that George Zimmerman became unrecognizable to Leanne Benjamin, she says, came when the Florida man finally realized that there was a chance he could go to prison for killing Trayvon Martin.

Even though Zimmerman had fatally shot Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Sanford, Fla., in February 2012, Benjamin said she believed that Zimmerman, who sold insurance out of the same building where she and her husband worked, was "very normal" and had shown "very good character" in their time together. Zimmerman told Fox News host Sean Hannity at the time that he was "truly sorry" for polarizing America.

But when the jury in Zimmerman's murder trial asked for a clarification on the manslaughter charge a day before he was acquitted of all counts in July 2013, Benjamin, who testified on his behalf in the trial, said that something happened to her friend that day - a change that she still can't explain almost 8½ years later.

"He snapped at that point," Benjamin, 70, told The Washington Post. "He changed completely. He just was not the same person."

Trayvon Martin's death set off a movement that shaped a decade's defining moments

A decade has passed since Zimmerman fatally shot Martin and claimed self-defense in a case that was among the first to set the stage for the nation's racial reckoning - and that helped give birth to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yet, since the former neighborhood watch volunteer was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter, Zimmerman, once described by GQ as "the most hated free man in America," has stretched his 15 minutes of infamy into 10 years of reprehensible headlines: arrests for domestic violence allegations, retweeting a photo of the 17-year-old Martin's dead body, reportedly selling the gun that killed the teen for $250,000.

Jay-Z namechecked him in a song after Zimmerman allegedly threatened to feed the hip-hop mogul to an alligator. Zimmerman - who once said he was punched in the face at a restaurant after telling diners that he killed Martin in self-defense - even got into online dating and painting, with art critics comparing his work to that of serial killer John Wayne Gacy and cult leader Charles Manson.

Years before Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted and celebrated by conservatives, Zimmerman was depicted as almost a folk hero by some gun owners and right-leaning media for his actions.

'Stand your ground' laws spread - and grow 'more extreme' - 10 years after Trayvon Martin's death

Zimmerman, 38, made headlines again this month when a judge dismissed the $100 million defamation and conspiracy lawsuit he filed against Martin's parents and their book publisher, HarperCollins. While Zimmerman alleged that Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin smeared him as being racist, Judge John Cooper rejected Zimmerman's claims, saying the Florida man failed to show "any fraudulent representation."

"There can be no claim for conspiracy to defraud if there is no adequately stated claim for fraud," the judge wrote.

When the lawsuit was filed in late 2019, Ben Crump, the family's attorney, noted how Zimmerman "continues to display a callous disregard for everyone but himself, revictimizing individuals whose lives were shattered by his own misguided actions."

"This tale defies all logic, and it's time to close the door on these baseless imaginings," Crump said in a statement at the time.

Zimmerman did not respond to multiple interview requests. Brother Robert Zimmerman Jr., who is George's spokesman, defended his sibling in an emailed statement to The Post, saying his brother has been treated like "society's whipping boy."

"My brother is perhaps one of the most misunderstood people on the planet," Zimmerman Jr. wrote.

Benjamin said that although she does not regret testifying on his behalf during the murder trial, she acknowledges that Zimmerman, whom she hasn't spoken to in a few years, "probably always will be a divisive figure in this country because of what he did."

"People had their doubts about him, but after he's done all of this, all their doubts are gone," she said. "People feel like they were right about George."

It didn't take long after his acquittal for Zimmerman to make news again. In 2013, he was accused in separate incidents of threatening or pointing a gun at his estranged wife and girlfriend, respectively, but the charges in both cases were dropped after the women recanted their accounts.

As his family was hoping he could parlay his infamy into a reality show - even as he claimed to be homeless - Zimmerman was involved in a September 2014 road-rage incident in which he threatened to kill Florida resident Matthew Apperson. Then, about eight months later, in May 2015, the two men were involved in another road-rage incident in Lake Mary, Fla., in which Apperson shot at Zimmerman as they were driving in their cars.

Apperson claimed self-defense, while Zimmerman, who had claimed self-defense in the fatal shooting of Martin, said the attack was unprovoked. Apperson was convicted of second-degree attempted murder in 2016 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The verdict shocked Michael Lafay, Apperson's attorney, who told The Post that he still has a hard time wrapping his head around how "Mr. Zimmerman was the winner of both sides of Florida's self-defense laws." (Apperson, 42, is set to get a new trial.)

George Zimmerman's many, many controversies since the Trayvon Martin case

Around that time, Zimmerman turned to Twitter. In September 2015, he retweeted a photo of Martin's slain body from a Twitter user who wrote, "Z-man is a one man army." He later said in a statement that he "did not, and never will knowingly retweet a picture of a deceased body."

Months later, he was banned from Twitter, a permanent suspension "for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on private information" as a result of posting topless photos of a woman he claimed was an ex-girlfriend.

Benjamin noted that money has been an issue for Zimmerman in the past decade. In 2016, Zimmerman told Las Vegas TV station KTNV that he had sold the pistol used to kill Martin for $250,000 to an unspecified bidder. Zimmerman also found an unlikely cash flow stream by selling his artwork. After he sold his first painting of a blue American flag for $100,099.99 on eBay, Zimmerman was accused by Mediaite and other outlets of copying the image from a stock image taken off the website Shutterstock without attribution.

Christian Viveros-Fauné is among the art critics who have widely panned Zimmerman's paintings as "murderabilia." The former Village Voice art critic told The Post that there was "absolutely no value" in the "complete cack-handedness" of Zimmerman's paintings, which Viveros-Fauné compared to pieces by Gacy and Manson.

"The value in his work is hate, which has a market in America," Viveros-Fauné said. "Just don't call it art." The curator added, "There was that great Andy Warhol line - 'In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.' And Zimmerman is really trying to stretch his 15 minutes as much as he can."

After he gave an interview on the fifth anniversary of Martin's death to WeSearchr - a crowdfunding platform for the alt-right that's listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist hate group - Zimmerman was in the news so much that the Orlando Sentinel dubbed him " the cockroach that won't go away."

Trayvon Martin's death set off a movement that shaped a decade's defining moments

He looked to another form of social interaction to distract him during that time: dating apps. Zimmerman was quickly booted off Bumble and Tinder in 2018 and 2019, respectively, after users pointed out that he had accounts under the fake name of "Carter."

Filmmakers Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason have not forgotten their own experience with Zimmerman. While filming the 2018 documentary series " Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story," Zimmerman threatened Jay-Z, an executive producer on the project, and anyone else who approached him or his family during shooting, saying he would feed them "to an alligator." Jay-Z seemingly responded to Zimmerman in his verse on the DJ Khaled song " Top Off," in which the mogul references "Georgie Porgie."

Zimmerman was charged with stalking a private investigator who contacted him about the docuseries, and he served 12 months of probation after pleading no contest. Nason said that she and the crew realized they were "getting in too deep with someone who is not well."

"We just want to know what happened from his perspective," Furst said. "Ultimately, what was revealed was a person who was still dangerous."

How Trayvon Martin's killing inspired a generation of Black journalists and activists

Zimmerman - who most recently lived in Lakeland, Fla., according to public records - has indicated in court documents that he's been subjected to death threats and has moved to protect himself. He's also acknowledged that he's had trouble finding employment. A speaking engagement at a gun and law conference in Boise, Idaho, was canceled last November after the hotel where the event was being held found out that Zimmerman was scheduled to appear.

Benjamin said that the years since she was a character witness for Zimmerman have not been easy. Her marriage fell apart, she said. The real estate agent has lost business in Lake Mary from people not wanting to work with someone who supported Zimmerman. But despite all the news Zimmerman has made for all the wrong reasons in the past decade, she still hasn't given up hope that her old friend "can still do something good in his life."

"I just keep moving forward. That's all anybody can do," she said. "I just wish George had done that."

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How George Zimmerman stretched 15 minutes of infamy into a decade of disgust

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The moment that George Zimmerman became unrecognizable to Leanne Benjamin, she says, came when the Florida man finally realized that there was a chance he could go to prison for killing Trayvon Martin.

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Eric Garner, a man known to local police in Staten Island, was murdered due to excessive force used on him from 6 officers. The method of the chokehold, which was used to restrain Garner to arrest, has been debated and often described as a cruel way to treat any person, and much more valuable to them, a black person.

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ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT
The Eric Garner case was unique because this police-induced death was caught on video from before the moment of physical confrontation. A mixed-methods representative household survey and Garner's arrest video were used to determine NYS voters' opinions ( n = 119) about police indictment and Governor Cuomo's request for expanded authority. Respondents were asked whether the officers should face indictment, shown the arrest video, and then asked again about indictment. Prior to the video, a majority of respondents (n = 86; 57.4%) believed involved officers should have been indicted. After viewing, the proportion increased by 13.7%. A majority supported Cuomo's call for expanded authority to appoint a special prosecutor in cases where police are involved in civilian deaths. Study limitations include prior exposure to the footage and a low response rate. NYS voters generally supported Cuomo's proposal for appointing a special prosecutor; however, a quarter of respondents disagreed with the method of reform and expressed a: 1) preference for every case to go to trial; 2) preference for a case-by-case basis; or 3) distrust in state-appointed special prosecutors. This research could inform discussions regarding proposed system reforms. Future research with a less well-circulated video is needed to determine the extent to which videos of police-induced deaths affect public opinion.

Introduction

Civil rights in America are still under fire (Valdez, 2015). Peaceful protests are met with state-sanctioned violence as police acquittals or lack of indictments follow the deaths of unarmed civilians (Zach, 2015). Black lives in America have been historically undervalued. During enslavement, Black lives were used as a commodity and were then viewed as a frivolity during Jim Crow. Critical Race Theory (CRT) posits that Black people face inequity within public service entities due to American institutions being constructed on notions of White supremacy (Crenshaw, 1995). Advances made during the Civil Rights Movement were instrumental in Black individuals gaining access to social institutions (education, voting rights, fair housing, immigration/nationality), but skin color (bias) still adversely affects the Black community today at much higher rates than other racial groups (Penner & Dovidio, 2016).

This disparity between Black Americans and other racial groups is particularly evident in the criminal justice system. Black people comprise 37.7% of America's incarcerated (U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2016), but only 13.3% of America's total population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015a), making a Black American 5.1 times as likely to be incarcerated as a White American. Almost a quarter of U.S. states (12) have a prison population that is majority Black (Nellis, 2016). Furthermore, Black neighborhoods are still targets of illegal police quotas (Bronstein, 2014), and Black people are 3.7 times as likely to be arrested for drug offenses as White people (HRW, 2009). Some scholars attribute these disparities to the "roots of poverty," while others postulate that these numbers are the product of racial profiling and fear of "the other" (Mitchell & Caudy, 2015; The Sentencing Project, 2013).

Within the police force, Black officers are affected by a dualism of Blackness and political pressure to be "proactive" in crime drops (what some refer to as the CompStat era). The New York Police Department's (NYPD's) Edwin Raymond has spoken out about his department's use of "inherently racist" police tactics such as illegal quotas, "quality of life" offenses, and disproportionate department recognition for arrests over protective acts-Broken Windows strategy (Kelling & Wilson, 1982).¹ In 2015, Raymond joined 11 of his police colleagues (by submitting audio recordings of conversations with a superior) in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of officers of color in the department who had been refused promotions for not participating in tactics to obtain numbers-driven arrests (Knafo, 2016). The case is still open before Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York (Docket No. 15-CV-6885; U.S. District Court Southern District of NY, 2015).

Police Use of Deadly/Lethal Force

According to the U.S. Supreme Court (Tennessee v. Garner; 471 US.1), deadly force is only to be used in cases where it is "necessary to prevent escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others" (Community Relations Service, 1999). Empirical evidence on the police use of lethal force is limited, but media headlines and lived experiences tell us that excessive force, and deadly action, dominate today's narrative of police-civilian interactions.

Amnesty International (AI) recently published a scathing report detailing America's lack of compliance to international lethal force laws-all 50 states are below the international standard, and some are in violation of U.S. constitutional law. In addition to a nationwide review of lethal force laws, AI demands the United States adhere to accountability measures (AI, 2015) in accordance with the United Nations (UN) Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials ( 1990), Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act (U.S. 103rd Congress, 1994), Death in Custody Act (U.S. 113th Congress, 2013) and urges the congressional passing of the Police Reporting Information, Data, and Evidence (PRIDE) Act.

A recent case analysis on deadly force cases in lower federal courts revealed excessive police force is a byproduct of department disorganization and managerial meltdowns (Lee & Vaughn, 2010). Miller suggests the disproportionality of non-White police deadly force victims to be more a result of neighborhood lines (i.e., those with more crime) than skin color (Miller, 2015). Klinger and colleagues used a neighborhood-level study and census tract data to map nine years of officer-involved shooting incidents in St. Louis. While shootings tended to occur in low-income Black neighborhoods with White officers, they found the level of firearm violence-not race, neighborhood, or socioeconomic status (SES)-to be strongly associated with police or officer-involved shootings (OIS). The authors concluded their article with a delineation of how a national OIS database could be constructed, to allow for transparency and greater understanding of police force factors (Klinger, Rosenfeld, Isom, & Deckard, 2016). A centralized database would provide a platform for data accountability and would ideally go beyond the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) "justifiable homicides" to include all incidents of police force, not just fatalities (Alpert, 2016). After a series of high profile civilian deaths due to police force, President Barack Obama established The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing in December 2014. The task force comprised six pillars aimed at improving law enforcement interaction with communities and civilians (Ramsey & Robinson, 2015).²

Watchdog Journalism

As it stands, the U.S. government does not release information about internal investigations after the use of lethal force, and none of the existing national databases (including the FBI's "justifiable" homicide reports and the Center for Disease Control's (CDC's) National Vital Statistics and Violent Death Reporting Systems) currently reports cases of lethal force that were not deemed justifiable. Some reasons for this absence are perceived rarity of incidents and a desire to protect police officers (White, 2016). This lack of transparency has led to public outcry and public response. Currently, there are no formalized oversight or accountability mechanisms that monitor a police department's use of lethal force; instead, data come from researchers, news outlets, and NGOs that have created monitoring mechanisms for civilian deaths due to police force.

Utilizing multiple systems estimation (MSE) techniques, the NGO Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) estimated that there are 1,500 officer-involved lethal shootings yearly (Gershman & Cohen, 2014). This number represents about 8%-10% of all homicides in the United States during the period analyzed. When including only homicides committed by strangers, the proportion of homicides committed by the police jumps to 30% of homicides each year (Ball, 2016). The collaborative research team Mapping Police Violence ( 2015) aggregated data from three websites to create a geographic information system (GIS) map that visually displays where police fatal force incidents have occurred in the United States. Fatal Encounters (FE) is an organization that has compiled a national database of civilian fatalities due to police force since 2000 (Burghart, 2016). In 2015, the Guardian and Washington Post joined in monitoring police fatal force incidents. The Guardian's The Counted ( 2016) has documented 849 people who have been shot and killed by the police in 2016 up to the time of this writing. The Washington Post's Fatal Force ( 2016) has documented 761 cases and was only able to identify the names of officers in 2 out of every 5 cases.³ The New York think tank Center for Police Equity (CPE) produced a report that compiled 5 years of police force incidents (19,000) in 11 major U.S. cities. Findings revealed force was used rarely (< 2% of cases) but was disproportionately used against Blacks compared to Whites (3.6 times as high). The top three methods of force between 2011 and 2015 were tasers, physical restraint, and pepper spray. Across all uses of force methods during arrest, the rate of force was higher against Blacks than against Whites (Goff, Lloyd, Geller, Raphael, & Glaser, 2016).

Technology Sound: Police Killings and Civilian Documentation

Documentation of the use of excessive force by the police has changed with the introduction of new technologies. In 1991, Rodney King was involved in a high-speed chase with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD); once he stopped his car, King was dragged out and severely beaten by four White officers. The entire altercation was caught on home video and led to a grand jury, only to have police manipulate the frame-by-frame footage and each of the four officers receive acquittals (Stuart, 2011). This injustice was met with a 6-day riot in Los Angeles during which over 1,000 people were injured and over 50 people were killed (Capehart, 2015). Two and a half decades later, America continues to face videos of unarmed Black men dying at the hands of the police. The advent of accessible, portable technology and cell phones equipped with cameras has changed the way Americans see police brutality on a literal level (Shaw, 2012).

Thousands of lethal force civilian fatalities have occurred since the world was struck by King's excessive beating. A small minority of these include the following: Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant who was shot 41 times in his Bronx apartment for the suspicion of having a gun and potentially being associated with a robbery (23 years old; 1999); Robert Mitchell, an unarmed teenager who was tased with 50,000 volts of electricity and killed for fleeing a traffic stop (16 years old; 2009); Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager visiting his father in a gated community who was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer for suspicious behavior (17 years old, 2012); Rekia Boyd, a young, unarmed woman who was shot in the back of the head by an off-duty detective for being too loud with her friends in an alley (22 years old, 2012); Tamir Rice, a child who was shot twice in the torso by police and did not receive any first aid for holding a toy gun (12 years old, 2014); Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager who was shot at least six times by an officer who said Brown "looked like a demon" when approaching the officer after being blocked by his vehicle for reportedly stealing cigarillos (18 years old, 2014); Sandra Bland, a young woman driving home from a job interview who was pulled over for a traffic stop, arrested, and later found dead in her cell (28 years old, 2015); and most recently in the media at the time of this writing (July 2016), Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Sterling was pinned to the ground and shot three times in the chest by police for reports of having a gun. Castile was shot inside his car while reaching for his license. Both incidents were video recorded. A recent Bloomberg poll speculates that White Americans are more likely to agree with police indictment if lethal force incidents are video recorded (Lopez, 2014). Campaign Zero found that charging police officers for fatal shootings is rare, but video evidence can be the difference between indictments and cover-ups (Bialik, 2016). For this reason, Campaign Zero ( 2016) advocates for body cameras on police officers.

Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement is an international activist group that has been instrumental in bringing police brutality and lethal force cases to the forefront of world news. Their roots began after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer. BLM's scope is not solely Black lives lost at the hands of police, but also includes addressing how systemic racism (Jee-Lyn García & Sharif, 2015) has "left Black people powerless at the hands of the state" (BLM, 2016). The group has used social media extensively to spread its message of racialized police violence and the necessity of dialogue, frequently with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. BLM has been credited with providing a new narrative to policy makers, one that is focused not only on equity, but also on the public health necessity of addressing law enforcement failures (Porter, 2015).

Eric Garner Case: "I can't breathe"

The NYPD's 120th precinct lies on the northern quarter of Staten Island in New York City (NYC). In the months leading up to the events of July 17, 2014, the precinct had received a number of quality-of-life complaints concerning groups of men loitering and selling cigarettes and drugs in the neighborhood of Tompkinsville. On July 17, Lieutenant Christopher Bannon noted a group of men congregating as he drove by a local hotspot for criminal complaints and ordered a pair of plainclothes officers to investigate. The area around Tompkinsville Park where police were dispatched had, according to the New York Times, "already that year been the site of at least 98 arrests, 100 criminal court summonses, 646 calls to 911 and nine complaints to 311" (Baker, Goodman, & Mueller, 2015). Among the group of men was a man named Eric Garner, who was well known in the community and to local officers.

As officers approached Eric Garner and made it clear that they meant to arrest him, Garner became frustrated and told the officers, "Don't touch me, please," and demanded to know why he was being singled out and harassed. Over the two-minute discussion prior to the attempted arrest, the officers occasionally endeavored to take hold of his wrists and arms. A civilian bystander filmed the scene. After backup arrived from the precinct, officer Daniel Pantaleo, one of the original plainclothes officers, swung one arm over Garner's shoulder and around his neck, and the other under his arm, and twisted him to the ground. The video recorded six officers closing in and handcuffing Garner while he lay prone (Goodman, 2016). Garner repeated, "I can't breathe" 11 times before becoming unresponsive (Mathias, 2014).⁴ Officer Pantaleo's hold around his neck and the weight of the arresting officers on his back were later implicated by the city medical examiner in his death (Shallwani, 2014).⁵

At 3:32 PM, officers called for emergency medical services despite reporting later that Garner "did not appear to be in great distress" (Baker at al., 2015). A second call was lodged about a minute and a half later. Both calls were labeled as "unknown," a low priority. The ambulance arrived about five minutes later, but the medical response has been criticized as anemic and disorganized once additional bystander footage became public shortly after Garner's death (Mueller, 2014). About four minutes after the EMTs arrived, Garner was lifted into the ambulance. At 3:44 PM, the emergency level was upgraded to the highest alert, "Segment 1," because Mr. Garner was in cardiac arrest. It is not clear when he had stopped breathing or entered cardiac arrest. At 4:34 PM, after transport to the Richmond University Medical Center, Garner was declared dead (Baker et al., 2015). Initially, all personnel involved were suspended without pay; since then, all have returned to their regular responsibilities, except one EMT still on "modified duty" (Democracy Now, 2016).

Officer Pantaleo's chosen method of incapacitation has come under significant scrutiny and is a point of contention in the legal and civil discussion around Garner's death (Downs, 2015). The officer and a number of organizations representing NYPD, as well as various experts and citizens across the country, have insisted that the maneuver used by the officer was not a "chokehold" (Coscarelli, 2014; Goodman & Wilson, 2014). By contrast, various city officials, including Mayor de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Bratton, and the city medical examiner responsible for the autopsy, have referred to it as such, an opinion shared by many experts, elected officials, citizens, and activists (Goldstein & Schweber, 2014; Mays, 2014). Chokeholds have been banned within the NYPD since 1993 and were only permitted in life-threatening situations up to eight years prior to the ban (Fischer, 1993). The NYPD has long recognized that the maneuver is "potentially lethal and unnecessary" (Friedersdorf, 2014). Unfortunately, chokeholds are still used frequently, and the officers who are found to have employed them are rarely punished (Goodman & Goldstein, 2014). The use of the chokehold is not itself illegal according to laws of NYC or New York State (NYS), and the Mayor, in agreement with Commissioner Bratton, has said he will veto any city council bill designed to make them so (Goodman, 2015). Appendix A displays a full timeline of Eric Garner's death.

Cuomo's Executive Order (No. 147) in Practice

The death of Eric Garner was what the Fifth Amendment considers an "infamous" event, and therefore instigated a grand jury. The purpose of a grand jury is to have a preliminary (sealed) hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to bring criminal charges (R. W., 2014). Directly after the grand jury's failure to indict in Staten Island (the Eric Garner Case; Fagan & Harcourt, 2014), NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked Cuomo for the power to investigate and prosecute cases in which a police officer is responsible for the death of an unarmed civilian (NYS Office of the Attorney General, 2014). The Governor expressed his willingness to issue an executive order that empowered Schneiderman to do just that, but declined to do so immediately, looking first to push the reform through the legislature (Valasquez & Paybarah, 2015). As the months passed and pressure from activists and victims' families mounted, it became clear that the Governor would be unable to organize and rally lawmakers to a passing vote before the legislative session came to an end. On July 8, 2015 Cuomo issued Executive Order 147 (NYS Office of the Governor, 2016).⁶ Under the order, the Attorney General, as special prosecutor, is required to investigate, and if necessary bring to trial, cases in which a police officer is responsible for the death of an unarmed or questionably armed and dangerous civilian. The special prosecutor and his or her office supplant the local District Attorney who is relegated to whatever role (up to and including none) the special prosecutor feels is appropriate (NYS Office of the Governor, 2015).

The assignment of nonlocal or "special" prosecutors to cases involving potential wrongdoing by police officers has been considered for many years and in many different locales (Eisen, 2015). In NYS, certain members of the legislature have been working toward a similar bill for over 10 years, but the effort thus far has been stymied. In Cuomo's 2015 State of the State address, the governor laid out a broad seven-point plan for reforming and strengthening New York's criminal justice system. One of these points called on legislators to pass a law establishing an "independent monitor who will review police cases where a civilian dies and no true bill is issued and ... can recommend a special prosecutor he appointed. The independent monitor should have access to the grand jury information" (Cuomo, 2015). Since then, a bill (A06509) sponsored by Keith Wright (D) of Harlem passed the Assembly, but failed in the Senate without coming to a vote (NYS Assembly, 2015a). The companion bill (S05592), sponsored in the Senate by Ruth Hassell-Thompson (D) of the Bronx, has been under consideration in the Finance Committee since January 2016. The current versions of the bill call for the creation of an Office of Special Investigation headed by a Deputy Attorney General appointed by the State Attorney General. This appointee would be empowered in the same ways and in the same situations as the special prosecutor is by Cuomo's current executive order. In cases where actions by an NYS officer are under review, the bill calls for a local superior county court to appoint a special prosecutor unaffiliated with the local District Attorney's Office or the State Attorney General's Office. Also included are provisions for a stronger judicial presence as part of the grand jury proceedings and a relaxation of the strictures against releasing any information about the grand jury proceedings, the instructions to the jury, and evidence submitted (NYS Assembly, 2015b).

The passage of recent incarnations of the bill have been stalled by partisan divisions as well as a strong desire by some upstate legislators to see a regional special prosecutor from the area appointed in place of a single statewide official, according to the Governor's office (Valasquez & Paybarah, 2015). Lawmakers cite concerns about exceptions that the reform makes to the lawful secrecy provisions that surround a grand jury's deliberations and minutes, as well as the fact that no budgetary provision has been made for the creation of a new advisory position and associated office (Hamilton & Valasquez, 2016). The Governor continues to encourage the legislature to pass a bill that would codify the reform as permanent state law, as the executive order expires and must be renewed on a yearly basis (NYS Office of the Governor, 2016). The reform and its associated potential laws have been roundly criticized by police representatives and district attorneys across the state, while many activists, criminal justice reform advocates, and other legal experts have applauded the government's response (Remnick, 2015; Roy, 2015). In the context of a charged public debate on policing and justice in the United States, this legislation addressing one small part of the conversation has been under consideration in the legislature for more than a year.

With strong opinions to be found in every corner of the state, it is far from clear what the will of the people actually is. It was to this end that a survey was conducted to ascertain the attitudes of NYS voters concerning Garner's death and the prosecutorial reforms that were temporarily dictated by the Governor and now lie before the elected representatives of the people of New York. The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to determine what effect the video had on voters' opinion on whether the arresting officers should face trial and (b) to determine whether NYS voters want to make Governor Cuomo's reform permanent.

Methods

Sampling

To obtain a representative sample of registered voters in NYS, the authors conducted a modified, 30-cluster design using population data from the 2010 Census (NY Government, 2010).⁷ This was conducted first at the county level (62 counties in NYS), followed by the random selection of 30 clusters with population proportional to sample size (via a sampling interval⁸). Five registered voters were selected from each cluster for an intended total sample of 150 NYS voters. Counties were arranged alphabetically, and clusters were selected through systematic, equal-step sampling. Our sample resulted in counties representative of the upstate and NYC metropolitan areas' population distribution, making stratifying by "upstate-downstate" unnecessary. Due to low response rates, data were gathered from 119 of the intended 150 voters.

Interview teams attempted to contact the 150 voters in the sample via phone prior to the interview; however, attempts to contact individuals were often unsuccessful due to outdated phone numbers, changes in address, and unanswered lines. An alternative household selection method was devised by using a random number generator to select an index household from our sampling frame of registered voters within the counties selected during the original sampling process. Interviewers then went in person to the index household and asked whether an NYS registered voter was available and willing to be interviewed. From this household, interviewers would systematically move to the next household on the left (facing the street) asking for registered voters willing to interview, until the requisite voters (five per cluster) had been completed for that county.

If households refused to participate, no follow-up contact was made. If households did not have an NYS registered voter present, interviewers did not conduct the survey. If registered NYS voters agreed to participate, they provided verbal consent and were given a copy of the consent form. Graduate students conducted interviews from April 1 to April 13, 2016.

Interview Instrument and Arrest Video

Interviewers used a 10-item mixed-methods survey in conjunction with Eric Garner's arrest video. The survey began with a brief description of the Eric Garner case; the first three questions addressed whether the respondent (a) had been previously familiar with the case, (b) had seen video footage of the arrest and (c) thought the officers should face trial. Our key question (B5) asked respondents whether they agreed with Governor Cuomo's proposal to make Executive Order No. 147 permanent. To accommodate various levels of relevant legal knowledge, we included a brief background on the grand jury process before posing the question and verbally stated four possible response options. The final question set was demographic: (a) self-identified race/ethnicity, (b) approximate age, and (c) months/years lived at current address. Appendix B displays all nondemographic questionnaire items.

Eric Garner's arrest video was retrieved from the New York Daily News's website in mp4 format (Murray, Burke, Marcius, & Parascandola, 2014). A bystander, Ramsey Orta, released his recording of Garner's arrest to NY Daily News. We selected this clip because it was the most complete footage, the most publicized, and from the source of first release. The 51-second clip shows Eric Garner's interaction with six police officers, including Officer Pantaleo-the officer who put Garner in a chokehold.

Procedure

Once interviewers arrived to a door with a New York registered voter willing to participate, they were instructed to read each survey question verbatim while a scribe documented respondents' answers and made any additional notes. During the course of the survey, respondents were shown a 51-second video, with audio, of Eric Garner's interaction with the police. The video was shown to respondents on the interviewer's laptop or tablet. Before showing the clip, respondents were warned of the potentially violent content and were told they could stop the film at any time. If this was the case, interviewers noted video stop time. If respondents asked not to see the video, interviewers made a note and indicated video stop time at 00:00. After interviewers completed the survey, respondents were asked whether they had any further remarks on the topic. Once questions were addressed and remarks noted, respondents were given a copy of the consent form with the project coordinator's contact information. The institutional review board approved this study. All procedures were carried out as outlined in the approved protocol.

Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses

The survey data were entered into Qualtrics Software and analyzed using a mixed-methods approach. SAS 9.4 and Dedoose 7.0.21 were used for the quantitative and qualitative analyses, respectively. Based on the 119 participants, response frequencies were conducted for survey results and Pearson chi-squared tests were used to determine any significant differences by sex, race, or whether the respondent lived in the NYC metropolitan area or upstate. Differences in age were determined by a t test. If differences were found to be significant among these demographic categories, the relative risk was calculated and reported. The responses to the final question in the survey were recategorized into a new variable because many respondents chose their own solutions to Governor Cuomo's proposal. The new variable was able to describe whether respondents were supportive of stricter measures than proposed or were content with the current judicial system. Open-ended questions in the survey were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis to determine what factors respondents considered in their responses to the main questions of interest. Coders conducted a Kappa test to determine intercoder reliability (kappa = 0.84).

Results

Descriptive Survey Results

A total of 1,313 households were visited to acquire our sample of 119 respondents; a majority of knocks were unanswered or did not have someone in residence at the time of visit (58.1%). Of the 550 households that answered the door, 10.7% did not have an NYS registered voter in the household, and more than half of the households with a registered voter (67.6%) declined to be interviewed.

Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the 119 respondents who were interviewed. The majority of respondents were men (54.2%; though this was not statistically significant), lived in the NYC metropolitan area (69.8%), and tended to be older, with a mean age of 50.5 years (95% CI: 47.1, 53.9). More than half of the respondents self-identified their race as White (58.0%), followed by Black/African American (21.0%), Latino/Hispanic (12.6%), Asian (5.9%), Middle Eastern (1.7%), and Other (0.8%). Table 2 summarizes the survey responses. Most respondents were both familiar with the Eric Garner incident (84.9%) and had seen video footage (73.7%) prior to being interviewed. A quarter (25.2%) of respondents declined to watch the video during the interview, and a small minority of respondents (1.7%) stopped before completion. The most common reason given for declining to watch the video was that people had already seen it or were already familiar with the Garner incident. Women were 2.32 (94% CI: 1.17, 4.60) times as likely to be willing to be shown the video by interviewers as men.

The Eric Garner Case: Statewide Survey of New York Voters' Response to Proposed Police Accountability Legislation

27 October 2016

The Eric Garner Case: Statewide Survey of New York Voters' Response to Proposed Police Accountability Legislation

27 October 2016

Figure 1 displays respondents' opinions of officer indictment in Garner's case. Before viewing the video, the majority of respondents indicated that the officers should face trial (57.4%); a quarter of respondents indicated that they did not know what should happen (27.8%); a minority did not think the officers should face trial (13.0%); and a few declined to respond (1.7%). Of the 119 respondents, 86 (72.3%) agreed to watch the Eric Garner video and were asked again whether the officers should be indicted. Of the 86 respondents, 61 (70.9%) did not change their opinion after watching the video. Of the 25 (29.1%) respondents that changed their opinion after watching the video, the majority (72.0 %) changed their responses from either "No" or "Don't Know," to "Yes," the officers should have faced trial; only a handful changed their mind in another direction. Before watching the video, Black respondents were 1.35 (95% CI: 1.14, 1.59) times as likely to state that officers in the Garner case should face trial as non-Black respondents. Before watching the video, White respondents were 0.59 (95% CI: 0.36, 0.99) times less likely to state that officers in the Eric Garner case should face trial than Black or other race respondents.

The Eric Garner Case: Statewide Survey of New York Voters' Response to Proposed Police Accountability Legislation

More than half of respondents agreed (57.1%) with the Governor's proposed reform to appoint a special prosecutor in cases where a grand jury is delayed or fails to indict police officers involved in the deaths of unarmed civilians. Some stated that they disagreed with the reform and that the process should stay as is (i.e., there should be no special prosecutor, 11.8%) and several disagreed, stating that every case should go to trial (7.6%). No respondents agreed with the statement "Police should never be tried for deaths occurring on the job." Other opinions were given by 24 of the respondents, in which the most common responses were that a special prosecutor should be assigned on a case-by-case basis (nine respondents), conducted by a third-party other than the State (eight respondents), or another response (seven respondents). When considering whether responses to this question called for stricter measures for police to face trials or for the status quo, we observe that over three quarters of all respondents (75.6%) wanted some greater measure of accountability for the police force.

Qualitative Analysis

To gain a deeper insight into the reasons behind respondent answers, interviewers posed an open-ended question asking for the top reasons or the thought processes in considering whether the officers in Eric Garner's case should face trial. The most common considerations in order of frequency stated were (a) whether excessive force was used by police officers, (b) the degree to which the individual resisted arrest, (c) abuse of police power, and (d) racial dynamics. Other justifications mentioned included not having enough evidence to make a conclusion based on the video alone and sympathy for the difficult working conditions of police officers.

For many respondents, the physical force police used on Eric Garner was the deciding factor. One respondent said: "The police escalated it and it was unnecessary. They were out to get him. The chokehold was absolutely terrible. They could have de-escalated the situation. He was backing off and was not being aggressive." The level of appropriate police aggression was often associated with the severity of the suspected crime. For example, many respondents felt that the level of force was not appropriate given the relatively mild nature of the crime (selling "loosies" or loose cigarettes). Respondents also stated that the use of excessive force was indicative of the arresting officers' lack of concern for the arrestee's well-being.

Resisting arrest was the second-most common factor respondents mentioned when considering whether the arresting officers should face trial or be charged. Of the respondents who stated that Eric Garner resisted arrest, responses were divided as to whether the degree of resistance warranted more aggressive action-or force. For example, one respondent said: "When law enforcement is confronting someone it is conceivable for them to use force if the person they are confronting is resisting them." Respondents who stated that the police officers should not face trial most often stated that Garner was resisting arrest in the video.

The idea of police privilege-hiding actions behind the badge-influenced many respondents' decisions. Several respondents felt that the police should be held accountable the same way civilians are in cases of abuse. For example, one respondent stated, "They killed a man. They choked him with their bare hands and get away with it. How? Aren't police supposed to be people too? Why aren't they on trial?"

The issue of Eric Garner's race came up frequently when respondents discussed whether the police should go to trial or be charged. One woman said: "People of color bring out the worst in police officers and face things that me as a White woman would never have to deal with." Another respondent shared: "...You know and it's even worse for people of color. And I think the media is slowly been picking up on more and more of these cases, maybe it's because they're happening more, but I think it's just because we're more aware of it. And it makes sense that people are angry, you know?" People acknowledged the role racism could play in police interactions with civilians, with many placing the blame on the police.

Our analysis further explored the relationship between factors associated with changes in respondents' opinions before and after watching the video. For those respondents who changed from "Don't Know" to "Yes," the police should face trial, the use of excessive force was frequently mentioned as an explanation. One respondent said, "What's most important is looking to see if there was unnecessary force used ... I think there should have been an investigation for that one officer who grabbed him around the neck." Of note, this was the only category of respondents (those who changed from "Don't Know" to "Yes") that cited loss of life, abuse of power, and severity of crime as factors they considered when explaining their thoughts as to why arresting officers should face trial. One respondent commented, "It is a life, whether using force or not." Another respondent said, "There's a lot of training officers get that teaches them how to deal with situations like this. This is power abuse. It should go to trial, and I would say that even if the police officer were a family member." Other factors the aforementioned respondents considered while watching the video included lack of adherence to protocol, resisting arrest, negligence of officers, and self-defense.

Discussion

The topic of police violence has dominated the mainstream American conversation in recent years, as the proliferation of smart phones has afforded average citizens the ability to document police-civilian interactions. Although there is inconsistent data as to whether the frequency of police violence toward people of color has risen, the increased media attention has made it a focus of national debate. Understanding the effect of media and the increased availability of immediate and unfiltered visual images on Americans' perceptions of police-civilian interactions is important for influencing political change and furthering social justice.

One aim of this study was to investigate whether video footage of police brutality would have an effect on people's opinions regarding the indictment of police officers. Prior to watching the film, 86 respondents were split as to whether the officers involved in Eric Garner's death should face trial (51.2% in favor; 48.8 against, unsure, or declined to respond). After watching the film, 44.19% of respondents initially not in favor of indictment stated that police officers should face trial. Watching the clip of Eric Garner's arrest increased the percentage of respondents who wanted indictment (73.3% post-video). A minority (16.3%) agreed with the position reached by the Staten Island grand jury (ruling: Officer Pantaleo cleared of charges).

We have already seen the significant effect of filming police violence/brutality in the news. In November 2015, video footage of White police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting African American teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times caused widespread protests. The video was a key tool in sentencing Van Dyke for first-degree murder, a very rare charge for an American police officer (Guarino, Lowery, & Berman, 2015). In addition, evidence shows that individuals judge police brutality differently depending on their background, SES, race, and experiences, and a high degree of ambiguity around these events allows for personal interpretations. Video footage, however, provides sensitive and emotionally complicated details of events that are otherwise difficult to talk about in common discourse and may help people clarify their opinions (Rouse, 2013).

The results indicate there may be some utility for video in helping people form opinions; however, these findings are limited due to the widespread prior exposure of this footage in the population. Respondents who were already familiar with footage from the Eric Garner case were very unlikely to change their mind after seeing the video. It is possible that their previous exposure to the footage had already hardened their opinions or that the video in fact had little to no effect on changing people's minds on the issue. Another possibility is that respondents who were willing to be interviewed were those who already had strong opinions on the matter, and therefore were less likely to have their minds changed about whether the officers should be indicted, regardless of what was shown.

Another aim of this study was to gauge the views of NYS voters regarding Governor Cuomo's decision to appoint a special prosecutor in cases of a civilian death at the hands of police. Only a minority of respondents thought the prosecutorial process should remain as is, and none believed that police should never face trial for civilian deaths occurring on the job. There is support for the Governor's reform among NYS voters, albeit with caveats. Several respondents expressed distrust in a state-appointed special prosecutor, preferring an outside federal or civilian entity to hold responsibility. Given the support this measure holds, moving forward, Governor Cuomo and the NYS legislature should continue to consider ways to increase accountability and oversight of the police. New York City recently established an Inspector General's office in 2013 with powers to identify issues, investigate policies, and make recommendations. However, there is still room to grow in the implementation of these recommendations, such as standardizing use-of-force policy and reporting, and expanding the influence of the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board (Peters & Eure, 2015).

Several limitations should be noted in the interpretation of our results. Foremost, our small sample size reduces our ability to make statistically significant conclusions. The low response rate (9.06%), while similar to recent public opinion surveys in the United States (Kohut, Keeter, Doherty, Dimock, & Christian, 2012), is quite low and likely reflects self-selection bias in the respondents, as those with strong opinions were possibly more likely to agree to be interviewed. The demographic breakdown of our sample was compared to characteristics of NYS voters from the 2014 Census data and publicly available voter registration data (NY Government, 2015; U.S. Census Bureau, 2015b), and differences may be reflected in our results. Our sample tended to be younger and with a greater male predominance than is representative of the population. This may skew the results toward greater support for indicting the officers, as other polls have shown that people under 30 years of age were more likely to believe that the Eric Garner grand jury reached the wrong decision. Likewise, the study results may more likely reflect the opinions of minorities (Black, Asian) and less of White voters, as the proportion of White voters was nearly 20% less than that of registered voters and may skew toward indictment (Doherty, Motel, & Weisel, 2014). Voters in the NYC metropolitan area and those upstate were sampled proportionately to actual voter distribution. Gender bias may also be present, as female respondents were more than twice as likely to be willing to watch the Eric Garner video. While this bias in response was not evident in responses to whether officers should have been indicted, women were more likely to support the Governor's plans for reform than men (RR = 1.55, 95% CI: 1.01, 2.37).

Despite these limitations, this survey reveals two important points. First, there is difficulty in determining the direct effect videos of police violence have on public opinion due to widespread exposure through social media. Any future attempts to isolate this effect should concern themselves with how much time has passed since the incident in question. The role of video footage in shaping public opinion is still unknown for this study. Second, a majority of NYS voters are supportive of the appointment of a special prosecutor in cases of civilian deaths by the police, a point that has not been demonstrated by other public opinion polls to date.

Conclusion

There is enough evidence to support the commonly held belief that Black men are more often profiled and disproportionately harmed by police officers (Miller et al, 2016). In fact, the lack of complete and accurate data sets implies a significant underestimation (Rosenfeld, 2015). Increasingly obvious and injurious racial bias has polarized and reduced much of the U.S. population to be either pro-Black lives (matter, BLM) or pro-police. This study presents the opinions of a group of NYS voters who overwhelmingly believe that there is a need for reform of the judiciary system that tries and indicts police officers. Given our sampling methodology, it is unlikely that our study selected for voters that were more likely to be more pro-Black lives than pro-police. Future research into respondents' own relationship with the police may give further insight. In fact, the qualitative analysis illustrates the complicated nature of voters' opinions on this topic, a fact that is decidedly absent from the more reductionist mainstream conversations. These narratives typically characterize individuals who advocate for Black lives and therefore against police officers themselves, rather than recognize the complexity of institutionalized racism and the ways in which officers are complicit in upholding injustice. Additional studies would also be helpful in determining how videos of these incidents affect public opinion. This research could inform future discussions regarding issues such as police body cameras and proposed system reforms. Given the polarized state of the nation surrounding what many characterize as state-sanctioned violence against marginalized populations, it is imperative that policy and lawmakers generate legislation that is consistent with the opinions of their constituency and recognize that a significant proportion want to hold law enforcement officers accountable for their actions.

Variable

Frequency (%)

NYS-wide registered voters (%)

Survey question

Frequency

Percent

Date

Event

August 13, 2014

A group of six New York City federal lawmakers echo calls for the Justice Department to open an investigation.

August 19, 2014

The District Attorney tells the media that Mr. Pantaleo will face a grand jury to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bring the officer to trial.

October 7, 2014

The Garner family files a claim of intent to sue the city over the arrest and subsequent death of Eric Garner.

December 3, 2014

The grand jury declines to indict Officer Pantaleo. All other personnel involved had been given immunity as part of the grand jury proceedings.

December 4, 2014

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo promises legislative action to address "the grand jury process."

Per an application to the court by District Attorney Donovan, Judge Stephen Rooney authorizes the release of limited facts concerning the types of evidence the grand jury reviewed.

February 17, 2015

New York State Chief Judge Lippman calls for judges to oversee grand jury proceedings that involve police wrongdoing and civilians. Currently, the prosecutor runs the proceedings and is responsible for educating jurors on the law and presenting all incriminating and exculpatory evidence.

July 8, 2015

Governor Cuomo signs Executive Order 147 appointing Attorney General Schneiderman as special prosecutor in cases where law enforcement officers are involved in the deaths of civilians.

July 13, 2015

The City of New York agrees to settle the $75 million dollar lawsuit brought by the Garner family for $5.9 million.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all Epidemiological Methods for Measuring Human Rights Abuses 2015-2016 students for their contributions to this work.

1 Broken Windows Theory (BWT) is the idea of police "cracking down" on smaller crimes to prevent major ones, particularly in more anonymous locations such as urban areas. BWT postulates a socially communicative effect of environments-those that are clean/maintained indicate a sense of monitoring and may deter unruly behavior; whereas environments with broken windows, graffiti, addicts, and prostitutes indicate a lack of monitoring and a lesser chance of being held accountable for smaller (and ultimately larger) crimes. The theory was experimentally tested by Philip Zimbardo in 1969 and introduced into popular press by James Wilson and George Kelling in 1982.

2 Six Task Force Pillars: (a) building trust and legitimacy; (b) policy and oversight; (c) technology and social media; (d) community policing and crime reduction; (e) training and education; and (f) officer wellness and safety.

3 Each of the aforementioned sources has their data publically available for download. Listed statistics are from October 14, 2016.

4 Communities United for Police Reform had 11 Days of Actions and 11 demands, one for each time Garner said, "I can't breathe" (http://www.thisstopstoday.org/).

5 Autopsy reports of Eric Garner's death have not been made public.

6 In a 1-year period since the creation of Executive Order 147, the executive order underwent five amendment processes.

7 A 30-cluster design is used globally for immunization and nutrition surveys.

8 The sampling interval was found by dividing the total 2010 New York State population (19,378,102) by the number of clusters (30).

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References for Eric Garner Timeline

New York Civil Liberties Union v. C. P. L., 190.25(4) (Richmond County, NY, 2014).

Hogan, G. (2015, April 21). High court agrees to quicker review of eric garner grand jury records case.Tompkinsville: DNAinfo New York. Retrieved July 25, 2016, from https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150421/tompkinsville/high-court-agrees-quicker-review-of-eric-garner-grand-jury-records-case

Mayor hold press conference on Staten Island man's death. (2014, July 18). Retrieved July 24, 2016, from http://abc7ny.com/news/mayor-hold-press-conference-on-staten-island-mans-death/199186/

Rizzi, N. (2015, May 6). New York's highest court asked to release Eric Garner grand jury testimony. Tompkinsville: DNAinfo New York. Retrieved July 25, 2016, from https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150506/tompkinsville/new-yorks-highest-court-asked-release-eric-garner-grand-jury-testimony

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NBC New York. (2014). Timeline: Eric Garner Death. New York, NY: NBC New York. Retrieved July 08, 2016, from http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Timeline-Eric-Garner-Chokehold-Death-Arrest-NYPD-Grand-Jury-No-Indictment-284657081.html

The Eric Garner Case: Statewide Survey of New York Voters' Response to Proposed Police Accountability Legislation

27 October 2016

Appendix B. New York Statewide Survey Questionnaire.

The following set of questions are about your access to information regarding the Eric Garner incident.

As I had mentioned, in Staten Island, a man named Eric Garner was arrested by a team of officers last year. During the arrest, one of the officers used a maneuver that involved placing his arm around Eric Garner's neck. Eric Garner lost consciousness during the arrest and died.

B4. Prior to being contacted by our team for this interview, were you familiar with the Eric Garner incident?

□ 1. Yes

□ 2. No

□ 98. Declined to answer

□ 99. Don't know

B1. Have you seen any video footage of the incident?

□ 1. Yes

□ 2. No

□ 98. Declined to answer

□ 99. Don't know

B2. Based on what you have seen or heard, do you think any of the officers involved in this incident should have faced a trial?

□ 1. Yes

□ 2. No

□ 98. Declined to answer

□ 99. Don't know

Now I am going to show you a video of the arrest, and then ask you a couple of questions afterwards. Just to remind you, this video does show violence and if you want me to stop the video, please say so.
[Show video. If video is stopped, record time _______________]
[Ask respondent if they would like to take a short break or if they are ready to continue]

B3a. After seeing this video, do you think any of the officers involved in this incident should have faced a trial?

□ 1. Yes

□ 2. No

□ 98. Declined to answer

□ 99. Don't know

B3b. Please understand, I am asking everyone this next question no matter what they have said. Can you tell us in a few words, the things that are most important to you when considering whether the officers involved should go to trial or have charges brought against them? Feel free to share any experiences or values that influence your thinking.

B5. To give you a bit of background, a Grand Jury determines whether or not a case goes to trial, not whether or not a person is convicted. In situations where the Grand Jury is delayed or fails to bring the case to trial, the Special Prosecutor would independently review the case.

Because of the Eric Garner case last summer, Governor Cuomo signed an Executive Order temporarily appointing the New York State Attorney General as a Special Prosecutor in cases where Law Enforcement Officers are involved in deaths of civilians. This year Governor Cuomo asked the State Legislature "to pass a law making this reform permanent." Based on what you know, do you agree with this proposal of the Governor?

[ Read the following answers verbatim. Stop after #4.]

□ 1. Yes, I agree that this reform should be permanent.

□ 2. No, it should stay as it is and there should be no special prosecutor.

□ 3. No, every case should go to trial.

□ 4. No, police should never face trial for deaths occurring on the job.

□ 98. [Do not read]. Declined to answer

□ 99. [Do not read]. Don't know

B5a. If "Other:_______________________________

B6. Do you have any further thoughts or remarks about this topic?

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The Eric Garner Case: Statewide Survey of New York Voters' Response to Proposed Police Accountability Legislation

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ABSTRACT ABSTRACT The Eric Garner case was unique because this police-induced death was caught on video from before the moment of physical confrontation. A mixed-methods representative household survey and Garner's arrest video were used to determine NYS voters' opinions ( n = 119) about police indictment and Governor Cuomo's request for expanded authority.

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Michael Brown, an 18-year-old; innocent of any harmful acts, was killed on August 9 2014 at 12 am after Darren Wilson had shot him over 3 times out of presumed hatred. Though Brown had stolen a box of cigars, he was in no position to be murdered. Many questions arose, which were asked to be answered by many professionals, like why was Brown ordered out of the street, and the manner in which Brown turned around. Multiple sources state that the officer had the right to fear Brown and Brown had the right to defend himself. It was a very hard case in which there was a large gray area that needed to be explored in order to serve justice; so, biases and experience needed to be eliminated in order to do so.

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What We Know -- And Don’t Know -- About Michael Brown’s Shooting

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Amid conflicting witness statements and autopsy analyses, dueling videotapes and a loud outcry for justice, there is substantial agreement about many of…

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Fergusson, a small sub-city in St. Louis, has seemingly been the center of attention whether it was protests or shootings. But how did it start and what's been happening? Well, it begins with the killing of Michael Brown in mid-2014 and many witnesses claim that Brown did not proceed in offense and instead was shot out of suspicion. Fergusson's protests have also widened the need for protests all over the country and gave people the courage to stand up and ask for their rights.

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The city of Ferguson, Missouri, has been a flashpoint for nationwide protests since the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer last year.

Protests in Ferguson followed Michael Brown's death and a grand jury declining to charge the officer with murder. A justice department investigation has also found widespread alleged racial bias in the police force.

Several days after the justice department report was released in March, two police officers were shot and injured. Later in August, a man was critically injured in a gunfire exchange with police during a rally marking the one-year anniversary of Brown's death.

Why are they protesting?

Demonstrators are calling for more action to be taken following the release of a federal report that alleged overwhelming racial bias in the town's policing.

Ferguson's police force has faced severe criticism since the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, leading to the sacking or resignation of several officials, including police chief Thomas Jackson.

Initially, the demonstrations focused on Ferguson but in November they spread to other US cities after a jury decided not to charge police officer Darren Wilson over the killing.

Mr Wilson is white. Mr Brown was black. The demonstrators see the case in terms of racism and police brutality.

Following the release of the justice department report, the US authorities vowed to reform the police force, possibly by dismantling it.
Race in America: The big question
What exactly happened in Ferguson?

The exact details of what happened that day remain disputed by police, eyewitnesses and family members.

What is known for certain is that around midday on 9 August 2014, Mr Wilson was driving a police car and encountered Mr Brown and a friend walking down a street.

Minutes later 18-year-old Mr Brown was dead, suffering at least seven gunshot wounds, according to county prosecutor Bob McCulloch. His body lay in the street for four hours before it was removed.

Mr Wilson fired a total of 12 bullets, though investigators were unclear exactly how many of the 12 struck Mr Brown. One injury may have been a re-entry wound.

What does Officer Wilson say happened?

Officer Wilson says he confronted Mr Brown and Mr Johnson at around midday on 9 August. The officer, who was in his vehicle, says he told the men to move to the pavement because they were walking down the middle of the road, holding up traffic.

The men ignored his request. When the officer spoke to the men again, he realised they were suspects in a robbery reported nearby.

He radioed for more officers and reversed his vehicle to block the men's way. Officer Wilson says he tried to open the door of his vehicle but Mr Brown slammed it shut. The officer says Mr Brown struck him in the face when he tried to use the door to push him back.

Officer Wilson says he drew his gun and threatened to shoot Mr Brown, fearing another punch to the face. Mr Brown is said to have challenged him, reaching through the window to grab the gun. The officer says a scuffle took place in which the weapon was fired twice but remained with him.

Mr Brown and Mr Johnson ran off. Officer Wilson left the vehicle and ran after them. Officer Wilson says he asked Mr Brown to get on the ground. But, he says, Mr Brown turned around and charged at him, with a hand reaching under his shirt in the waistband of his trousers.

Officer Wilson says he fired several shots at Mr Brown, who was gaining on him.
Official account of the final 90 seconds Timeline of shooting
What do other witnesses say happened?

Dorian Johnson was with Michael Brown at the time. After the initial exchange, Mr Johnson says the policeman reversed his vehicle, reached out and grabbed Mr Brown by the neck. The men engaged in a "tug of war", he says, holding on to each other's shirt and arms.

Mr Johnson says he heard Mr Wilson threaten to shoot. He did not see Mr Brown punch the officer and he did not believe Mr Brown had grabbed the officer's gun.

He says Mr Brown stopped when the officer ran after him, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. Mr Johnson says Mr Brown was shot in this position - rather than while charging at the officer.

There are other witnesses who support what Officer Wilson says happened, but they haven't spoken to the media.
Conflicting testimonies
What did the jury decide?

In November, St Louis County grand jury and the US justice department failed to find enough evidence to bring charges against Officer Wilson.

The panel of jurors was composed of 12 citizens picked at random. Six were white men, three were white women, there was one black man and two black women.

They had heard testimony from scores of witnesses, as well as from forensic and medical experts. The evidence from witnesses was often contradictory.

Some of it had supported Officer Wilson's version of events. Other witness statements had appeared to support the account of Dorian Johnson, Mr Brown's friend who was with him when he died.

Unusually, St Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch did not recommend any charges against Officer Wilson to the jury. This caused anger in Ferguson as critics said it showed an unwillingness to prosecute.
When can police officers shoot?
Why has there been criticism of the legal process?

"This process is broken," said the Brown family's lawyer, Benjamin Crump.

Justice had not been served, he said, because Darren Wilson had not been cross-examined when he gave evidence to the grand jury.

Mr Crump also identified what he said were inconsistencies in the officer's evidence and condemned the "symbiotic relationship" between prosecutor Mr McCulloch and the local police force.

Critics of Mr McCulloch have also expressed concern about his impartiality. His father, a police officer, was shot dead by a black man in the 1960s.
The grand jury explained
What did the justice department investigation find?

The US justice department opened two investigations after Mr Brown's death. The first did not recommend any federal civil rights charges against Mr Wilson, given the high legal standard needed to so.

But a second investigation into the Ferguson police force and court system at large found widespread racial bias in the city's institutions including -

Police were quick to escalate force and when they did, African-Americans accounted for 90% of officers' use of force

Explicit racial bias in communications between police and court

The court's practices impose unnecessary harm, overwhelmingly on African Americans, including arrest warrants are issued if fines are not paid, instead on the basis of public safety

Many officers appear to see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson's predominantly African American areas, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue for the city

Mr Holder himself called the report "searing" and suggested that while the available evidence did not support the argument Mr Wilson acted illegally, it was not hard to understand why protests had erupted in the town.

"Amid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices - it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg," Mr Holder said.
The damning report that made Ferguson's police chief quit
What happens now?

Police Chief Tom Jackson was the sixth person to be fired or resign from Ferguson's city government after the publication of the report.

Protesters took to the streets hours after his resignation to call for more heads to roll.

But as a relatively low-key demonstration was breaking up after Mr Jackson's resignation, two St Louis County police officers were shot and injured by gunfire.

On 9 August, a year after Michael Brown was killed, a man was shot and injured during a gun battle with police at a protest rally to mark the one year anniversary.

The justice department will look for changes in Ferguson police force and court system, and have reserved their right to enforce needed changes through a settlement.

St Louis police chief Jon Belmar has demurred over whether his police force could effectively take over the city's police department.

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How one shooting sparked national protests

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The city of Ferguson, Missouri, has been a flashpoint for nationwide protests since the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer last year. Protests in Ferguson followed Michael Brown's death and a grand jury declining to charge the officer with murder.

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Philando Castile was a 32-year-old man, who suffered death on July-6-2016. There could be multiple solutions and with no negatives, with an incentive issued by the state or country, it could very well stop the excessive force used by the police department. Creating investigation-able agencies could open up third and fourth eyes to the evidence being submitted. Philando Castile is not the only one who has gone through unfair lethal treatment by the police, after stating he has a firearm; he is shot out of fear and not given a chance to hand it over.

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Two Years After the Police Killing of Philando Castile, Justice Continues to Be Denied | News & Commentary | American Civil Liberties Union

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The ACLU dares to create a more perfect union — beyond one person, party, or side. Our mission is to realize this promise of the United States Constitution for all and expand the reach of its guarantees.

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George Floyd, a name you recognize even if you haven't directly read about him was a man with no firearm, who posed no danger, was killed from heavy physical force from an officer Derek Chauvin. Statistics show that the black population of the U.S. have faced higher innocent deaths than any other race; this combined with another killing was enough to overfill the cup and outrage already mad protestors. The protestors wanted justice for a man who faced discrimination above all other things, it was prevalent that in this case, they were not going to wait for half a decade.

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On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died while in the custody of four officers of Minnesota's Minneapolis Police Department. One of the officers had knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly ten minutes. Floyd's death caused a wave of protests across the United States and around the world calling for an end to police violence. Justice for George Floyd explores who George Floyd was, what happened the day he died, and the protests that followed. Easy-to-read text, vivid images, and helpful back matter give readers a clear look at this subject. Features include a table of contents, infographics, a glossary, additional resources, and an index. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Core Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

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On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died while in the custody of four officers of Minnesota's Minneapolis Police Department. One of the officers had knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly ten minutes. Floyd's death caused a wave of protests across the United States and around the world calling for an end to police violence.

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President Donald Trump and Now President Joe Biden has, to say the least, different views about racism, Trump, on one hand, states on multiple occasions a 70-30 gray area of racist things. While Biden tends to lean toward the BLM movement and convincingly supported the Black population in return for his inauguration back in 2020. They are definitely polarizing, and their views are sometimes subliminal but mostly explicit; meaning they clearly and plainly serve what they believe is best for the country. Each of their actions is and were underlined and mined because of course they are presidents, and each has experience in supporting and not supporting black lives (before or after the movement started).

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The horrific killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May and the fury over the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in March set off massive protests across the country against racial injustice and police brutality.

Over the months that followed, new and previous supporters of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement held demonstrations from coast to coast and a new generation of Americans protested for racial equality.

Race is now at the center of the national conversation heading into the final weeks of the 2020 campaign for president, from the disproportionate impact the novel coronavirus pandemic has had on communities of color to reforms that would help address racial disparities in policing.

It has also been a complicated issue for both candidates over the course of their long careers. Former Vice President Joe Biden made history by choosing a Black woman, Kamala Harris, to be his running mate and served alongside the nation's first Black president.

But he has also drawn criticism for his position on busing in the 1970's to help end segregation in schools and the 1994 crime bill, which helped lead to an era of mass incarceration.

Trump set the tone for his presidency when he said Mexico was not sending its best immigrants, including "rapists," on the day he announced his campaign. That was followed by a call to ban Muslim immigration, his perpetuation of the debunked "birther" conspiracy against President Barack Obama among other things. And he has largely ignored the sources of the racial unrest that has erupted around the country in recent months.

At the same time, Trump has claimed he is the least racist person and touted the economic opportunities he has created for African Americans during his presidency.

Here's a look at where Trump and Biden differ on the issue of racial justice, and significant statements they've made related to race.
Trump's troubles
Starting before the 2016 election and continuing into his presidency, Trump repeatedly questioned President Barack Obama's citizenship, amplifying without evidence a racist disinformation campaign designed to call into question the legitimacy of the nation's first Black president.

In 2015, Trump entered the presidential race saying Mexico was sending crime, drugs and " rapists" to the United States. During his first term in office, Trump continued to seek to strengthen support among segments of his mostly white base by igniting fear of the "other" through policies and rhetoric.

Nationally, roughly 10% of Black voters are planning to support Trump in 2020, according to an analysis of public polling by FiveThirtyEight, similar to the support he received in 2016. Exit polling from 2016 also shows that Trump received more support from Black voters that year than previous GOP presidential nominees Mitt Romney and John McCain.

In 2017, Trump issued an executive order instituting a travel ban from predominantly Muslim countries, a version of which was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court. Trump implemented his travel restrictions citing national security concerns from " terror-prone countries."

When later that year, a participant at a white supremacist rally killed a 32-year-old woman when he rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump drew backlash for claiming there were " very fine people on both sides.." The driver was found guilty of first-degree murder.

In 2018, Trump, who has called himself the least racist person, depicted a migrant caravan as a violent threat to the country and called it an " invasion," in line with the racist rhetoric he campaigned on in 2016 regarding immigrants.

He's also targeted the four Congresswomen of color nicknamed " The Squad," suggesting that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. and Rashida Tlaib D-Mich., all "go back" to the countries "from which they came." Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley and Tlaib were all born in the U.S.; Omar is a Somali-American who immigrated as a refugee and became an American as a teenager.
Trump 2020: Rhetoric heats up
As the 2020 race heated up, so did the divisive rhetoric.

In 2020, Trump called Black Lives Matter " a symbol of hate" and also stoked racist fears after overturning an Obama-era housing rule intended to fight racial segregation by linking funding to the reduction of housing inequality.

The rhetoric echoed a federal lawsuit from 1973, in which Trump was named with his father, Fred, and accused of discriminating against Black tenants at their housing properties in New York. The parties ultimately reached a settlement without an admission of guilt from the Trumps.

In an attempt to appeal to his base, Trump made a request in September to the Office of Management and Budget to halt anti-racism training in federal workplaces, calling it "anti-American propaganda." He later signed an executive order expanding the ban to contractors doing business with the federal government. The order prohibits the teaching of "divisive concepts" such as white privilege, which is the analysis of the inherent advantages a white person has in America, and systemic racism, which examines discriminatory rules, practices and customs embedded in law.

Weeks later, Trump contradicted that order with the release of his economic " Platinum Plan " for Black Americans, which includes "diversity training."

Also in September, Trump delivered a dark and racially divisive speech at the National Archives playing off of the fears and insecurities of supporters who believe calls for racial equality are "attempting to demolish" the "treasured and precious inheritance" of our nation. He gave a warning that the "crusade against American history is toxic propaganda," referring to critical race theory, the study of society and culture as they relate to race, and The New York Times' 1619 Project that analyzes U.S. history through the lens of slavery. That day he signed an order to promote " patriotic education."

In response to a national outcry over killings of unarmed Black people by police, Trump has chosen to brand himself the "law and order" president while avoiding discussions about the root cause of the protests, despite expressing sympathy for the families of some of the people killed. He's said demonstrators protesting racial injustice are " looking for trouble" and that companies supporting BLM are "weak" and led by "weak people."

He's a strict opponent to calls for stripping police departments of funds and called the "defund the police" movement a " fad."
Trump accomplishments on prison reform and economy
Trump has refused to acknowledge that systemic racism is a problem in the United States. However, in a departure from his tough-on-crime rhetoric, one of the biggest legislative achievements of Trump's first term was signing into law the bipartisan 'First Step Act' in 2018, which provided the most sweeping changes to prison sentencing laws in decades, and which Trump says will "rollback" certain provisions from President Bill Clinton's 1994 Crime Bill that disproportionately affected the Black community.

More than 3,100 inmates have been released so far as part of its enactment, including Alice Johnson, a Black grandmother who was serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug arrest and was ultimately pardoned by Trump.

The president often claims that African Americans have seen the most economic gains under his leadership, but that's misleading. According to a fact-check by the Associated Press, unemployment for Black Americans did reach a record low during the Trump administration at 5.4% in August 2019, before the pandemic struck, but much of that progress stemmed from the economic recovery from The Great Recession during the Obama administration.

The AP also cited that the median household income for Black Americans was $41,361 in 2018, below its peak of $43,380 in 2000, according to data from the Census Bureau.

When asked in June how he plans to address systemic racism in the justice system, the president said it will heal itself when the economy is strong again.

"By the way, what's happened to our country and what you now see, it's been happening, is the greatest thing that can happen for race relations, for the African American community, the Asian American, the Hispanic American, for women, for everything," Trump said in June after being asked why he doesn't have a plan to address systemic racism. "Our country is so strong, and that's my plan. We're going to have the strongest economy in the world."
Joe Biden: Legacy of Black support and some criticism
The former vice president, who made history by serving alongside the first Black president, also made history by selecting Sen. Kamala Harris to be his running mate, making her the first Black woman to be a major party's nominee.

Biden has strong support from much of the Black community, with his nomination due in large part to his support in South Carolina and his success there boosted by Rep. Jim Clyburn's endorsement.

But he's also found himself on the receiving end of criticism from the crucial voting bloc, ranging back to his spearheading of the 1994 crime bill, which led to an increase of mass incarcerations, and most recently in May for saying "you ain't Black" to African American voters deciding between him and Trump. He also faced backlash for comparing the diversity in African American communities to Latino communities, suggesting the former is a monolith.

During a heated exchange with Harris during a Democratic primary debate, Biden's record on opposing federally mandated busing drew new attention. In 1977, Biden called it a "bankrupt policy." At the debate in June, Biden claimed Harris took his record out of context and said he supported voluntary busing.

Biden also drew fire for working with segregationist Democrats while he served in the Senate. He has reiterated that he did not agree with their views and that "there's not a racist bone in my body."

Biden's also expressed regret over the Obama administration's immigration policy, calling it a " big mistake" to have deported thousands of people with no criminal records.
Biden's plan and issue with Latino support
Unlike his opponent, however, Biden does acknowledge systemic racism and has released the " Biden Plan for strengthening America's Commitment to Justice," which focuses on preventing crime, eliminating racial disparities and providing second chances for those who have had contact with the criminal justice system.

Biden's plan, which was put forward before this year's protests, calls for an end to private prisons, cash bail and the death penalty and would expand the Justice Department's purview to address police and prosecutor misconduct. It would also institute an independent task force to tackle discrimination.

He also supports the decriminalization of marijuana and automatically expunging records for those who have been convicted of marijuana-related offenses. Data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) shows that Black people have been four times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession.

A pillar of his "Build Back Better" policies focuses on the economy and inclusion, specifically how he would help Black, Latino and disadvantaged communities.

While polling shows Biden with a lead over Trump among Latino voters, Biden's campaign has acknowledged that it trails the support Hillary Clinton saw in 2016, and it has been criticized for lack of outreach to Latino communities. But the campaign has touted its diverse staff, saying 46%of full-time staff are people of color.

"We know we have work to do and we have said from the beginning," Biden's campaign senior adviser Symone Sanders told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week."

Biden has embraced the concept of "Black Lives Matter" and often talks about disparities in the country, telling ABC's Robin Roberts that there's a " fundamental difference " between the two candidates on race.

"The truth is, there's a fundamental difference between Donald Trump and me on the issue of race across the board," Biden told Roberts. "This is a man who spent his entire career denigrating African Americans. Denigrating them, continuing to denigrate them. To do nothing but go after race and inflame it. Pour, you know, gasoline on the fire."

A September 27th ABC News/Washington Post poll of likely voters shows that the equal treatment of racial groups is among the top issues in the 2020 election. When asked who they would trust more to handle that issue, 56% said Biden, while 36% said they would trust Trump.
ABC News' Molly Nagle, Elizabeth Thomas and Jordyn Phelps contributed to this report.

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Trump vs. Biden on the issues: Racial justice

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Comparing where the presidential candidates stand on racial justice. The horrific killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May and the fury over the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in March set off massive protests across the country against racial injustice and police brutality.

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Lebron James and others on recent black deaths

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Lebron James and others on recent black deaths

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Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, and Dwyane Wade begin the ESPY Awards with a strong opening, addressing social and racial leadership and events. Asking the audience of sports stars to provide for the unification of communities as well as a request to put a stoppage to gun violence and stand up to be a role model for what an athlete should stand with. Defending the case that it will be hard to change, it will be hard to commit to action, but it won't be hard if we believe that we are in a battle that we know hasn't even started yet.

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No highlight, championship or individual accomplishment showcased during the 2016 ESPY Awards Wednesday night was more powerful than the show's cold opening.

Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James teamed up for a moving call to action for other athletes to use their celebrity, influence and resources to make a difference in a divided America plagued by gun violence, injustice and racism.

Anthony turned to Instagram last week as the nation was torn by the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the retaliatory attack that led to the deaths of five Dallas police officers to urge others to inspire change. This week, he said he plans to use the Summer Olympics as another platform to spread his message, indicating he is not taking this lightly.

Reminiscent of Muhammad Ali's black athlete summit from the summer of 1967, Melo started the show on a moving note when he was joined by fellow NBA stars Paul, Wade and James in a three-and-a-half-minute speech that, because of its social significance, timeliness and let's face it, the need right now for more thoughtful and serious social leadership, may have eclipsed the legendary Jimmy V speech as ESPN's finest moment.

Below is the transcript of their speech.
Carmelo Anthony:

Good evening. Tonight is a celebration of sports, celebrating our accomplishments and our victories. But, in this moment of celebration, we asked to start the show tonight this way, the four of us talking to our fellow athletes, with the country watching.

Because we cannot ignore the reality of the current state of America. The events of the past week have put a spotlight on the injustice, distrust and anger that plague so many of us.

The system is broken. The problems are not new. The violence is not new. And the racial divide definitely is not new.

But the urgency to create change is at an all-time high.
Chris Paul:

We stand here tonight accepting our role in uniting communities, to be the change we need to see. We stand before you as fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, uncles and in my case, as an African-American man and the nephew of a police officer, who is one of the hundreds of thousands of great officers serving this country.

But, Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Laquan McDonald. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile.

This is also our reality.

Generations ago, legends like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and countless others, they set a model for what athletes should stand for.

So we choose to follow in their footsteps.
Dwyane Wade:
The racial profiling has to stop. The shoot-to-kill mentality has to stop. Not seeing the value of black and brown bodies has to stop. But also, the retaliation has to stop.

The endless gun violence in places like Chicago, Dallas, not to mention Orlando, it has to stop. Enough. Enough is enough.

Now, as athletes, it's on us to challenge each other to do even more than we already do in our own communities. And the conversation, it cannot stop as our schedules get busy again. It won't always be convenient. It won't. It won't always be comfortable, but it is necessary.
LeBron James:

We all feel helpless and frustrated by the violence. We do. But that's not acceptable. It's time to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what are we doing to create change.

It's not about being a role model. It's not about our responsibility to a tradition of activism.

I know tonight we're honoring Muhammad Ali. The GOAT. But to do his legacy any justice, let's use this moment as a call to action for all professional athletes to educate ourselves. It's for these issues. Speak up. Use our influence. And renounce all violence.

And most importantly, go back to our communities, invest our time, our resources, help rebuild them, help strengthen them, help change them.

We all have to do better. Thank you.

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LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade address gun violence, racial turmoil before ESPYs

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No highlight, championship or individual accomplishment showcased during the 2016 ESPY Awards Wednesday night was more powerful than the show's cold opening. Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James teamed up for a moving call to action for other athletes to use their celebrity, influence and resources to make a difference in a divided America plagued by gun violence, injustice and racism.

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Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed on 23 February 2020, his family's lawyers even went on to call it a "modern-day lynching"! The McMichael duo of father, Gregory McMichael, and son, Travis McMichael along with their neighbor deny racism and plead not guilty and claim self-defense. The BLM raised a fund, started a petition for arrest, and showed huge support for Mr. Arbery's family. Key footage revealed that Ahmaud had not committed a serious crime; therefore made the McMichaels and their accomplices ruthless and racist murderers. And even the then New president, Joe Biden demanded justice for the death of Arbery.

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Image source, Getty Images

The racially charged case of three men accused of killing a black jogger last year in the US state of Georgia has drawn national attention. The community at the heart of the incident is on tenterhooks as the trial nears its end.

Ahmaud Arbery was shot on 23 February 2020 in a confrontation with Gregory and Travis McMichael. It took more than two months for the men to be arrested, along with the neighbour who filmed the death.

Lawyers for Mr Arbery's family have called his death a "modern-day lynching". The McMichaels argue that they were defending themselves while trying to make a "citizen's arrest".

Here's what we know so far.

Who is on trial?

Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis, 35, and their neighbour William "Roddie" Bryan, 52, were arrested in May last year. Mr Bryan joined the McMichaels in their pursuit of Mr Arbery.

They each face nine charges, including murder and aggravated assault. They have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors allege that Travis McMichael used a racial epithet and an expletive directed at Mr Arbery as he lay on the ground. The men deny racism.

Image source, Georgia Bureau of Investigation

Image caption,
Son Travis McMichael (left) and father Gregory McMichael

What has happened in the trial?

Prosecutors have argued racism was a key factor in the case. In her opening statement, lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski told the jury: "All three of these defendants did everything they did based on assumptions - not on facts, not on evidence."

On 8 November, the jury saw footage from police body cameras in the moments just after Mr Arbery was killed. Prosecutors used the video in court in an effort to undermine the defence's argument that the three men were simply trying to detain Mr Arbery.

"You had no choice," the elder McMichael is heard telling Travis as the first officer approaches. Mr Arbery is shown on the ground just a few steps away.

Prosecutors rested their case on 16 November after showing jurors graphic photos of Mr Arbery's shotgun wounds.

In her closing argument on 22 November, Ms Dunikoski said that the defendants "assumed" Mr Arbery had committed a crime and tried to unlawfully detain him "without legal authority".

"You can't create the situation and then go 'I was defending myself'," Ms Dunikoski said, adding that all three defendants had made their decisions because Mr Arbery "was a black man running down the street".

Despite protests from prosecutors, only one black member is seated on the the 12-person jury. Defence lawyers ruled out some African-American candidates for the panel, citing their possible preconceived bias on the case under questioning.

The defence has employed a two-part strategy: citizen's arrest and self-defence.

"It was obvious that he was attacking me, that if he had gotten the shotgun from me, it was a life-or-death situation," Travis McMichael told the court.

He spoke using police terminology and at one point cried on the stand, saying he thought of his son during the confrontation.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
Travis McMichael seen in court during jury selection

During his closing argument, defence attorney Jason Sheffield said that Travis McMichael had spent nearly a decade "learning about duty and responsibility" while in the US Coast Guard.

He also defended the younger Mr McMichael's right to make a citizen's arrest, and argued his client was worried that Mr Arbery had a weapon.

"You do have the right to stop a person and hold them and detain them for the police," Mr Sheffield said. "There's a risk with that, and tragic consequences that can come from that."

Mr Sheffield's arguments were echoed by Laura Hogue, who represents Gregory McMichael.

In her closing remarks, Ms Hogue said that a "good neighbourhood is always policing itself", and called Mr Arbery a "recurring night-time intruder" that refused to stop when confronted.

Who was Ahmaud Arbery?

A former star high school football player, his father said he often exercised in the area.

His family has described him as a good, generous young man with a big heart.

Image source, Family photo

Image caption,
Ahmaud Arbery

When Mr Arbery was in high school, he received five years of probation for a first-time weapons charge and in 2018, was convicted of probation violation for shoplifting, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper.

It emerged that, in 2017, a Glynn County officer attempted to tase him after he denied their request to search his car at a park.

Police bodycam footage showed the encounter with officers, who said he was in a car in an area known for drug use. He said he was on his day off from work. The taser malfunctioned and he was allowed to leave on foot.

How did he die?

Mr Arbery was out for an afternoon jog in Brunswick on 23 February 2020.

The elder McMichael, a neighbourhood resident, told police he believed Mr Arbery resembled the suspect in a series of local break-ins. Police have said no reports were filed regarding these alleged break-ins.

The McMichaels armed themselves with a pistol and a shotgun and pursued Mr Arbery in a pickup truck through the neighbourhood. Mr Bryan later joined the pursuit.

The younger McMichael testified during the trial that he tried to talk to Mr Arbery while the two were still in their truck and that Mr Arbery never threatened the trio, brandished a weapon, reached into his pockets or yelled after being confronted.

After getting out of his truck, Mr McMichael fired his shotgun at Mr Arbery during a struggle. He claimed self-defence, saying that Mr Arbery grabbed at his gun.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
Residents have set up memorials in the neighbourhood

A post-mortem examination showed Mr Arbery had two gunshot wounds in his chest, and a gunshot graze wound on the inside of one of his wrists.

A 36-second clip filmed from a vehicle following Mr Arbery surfaced publicly on 5 May 2020.

It shows Mr Arbery trying to bypass a pickup truck ahead of him on the road and then struggling with a man carrying a shotgun. There is muffled shouting and three gunshots are heard.

A second man with a pistol, who was standing in the bed of the pickup, is then seen standing alongside the other armed man with the jogger no longer in view.

The clip - which sparked nationwide outcry swiftly followed by criminal charges - was leaked at the behest of Gregory McMichael because he thought it would make him and his son look better, according to WSB-TV in Atlanta.

Five days later, footage from a surveillance camera emerged, showing a black man in a white T-shirt - believed to be Mr Arbery - at a home construction site shortly before the shooting.

He is seen walking on to the site and looking around for a few minutes before jogging down the street.

During the trial, the site's owner, Larry English Jr, testified that the man in question had not disturbed or damaged his property during the visit. He added others had also been seen trespassing on his property, but he never authorised the McMichaels to enter his property or confront anyone.

Jurors were also shown bodycam footage of the armed McMichaels searching for a suspected burglar at Mr English's property 12 days before the jogger was killed.

Police records show one report of theft in the neighbourhood between 1 January and 23 February 2020, US media report. That incident involved Travis McMichael's pistol going missing from the family's unlocked pickup truck on 1 January.

What's the law in Georgia?

Under the citizen's arrest law, an individual could detain someone they had seen committing a serious crime and if the suspect was trying to escape.

The state law, which dates back to the American Civil War era, was repealed in the wake of the incident.

Georgia was also one of only four states at the time with no hate crime statutes. Hate crime legislation has since been passed into law.

In a separate trial due to begin next year, a federal grand jury has accused the McMichaels of hate crimes and attempted kidnap of Mr Arbery. They have pleaded not guilty.

More on this story

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Ahmaud Arbery: What you need to know about the case

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The fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery drew national attention. The trial over his death is underway.

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The Arrest of 21 Savage, a mega-star and rapper in the current music industry, had the scariest and sadly the most unfortunate days of his life back in February of 2019. It began with him shooting shots at ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) & U.S. Immigration Laws, a very controversial move considering that ICE already knew about his U visa pending. Then it almost seemed like a well-thought-out and planned arrest on Superbowl Sunday in February; throughout the week, his performance at the grammy's was blocked off but millions of people grew in support as Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of BLM, helped in groups beginning to help 21 in the arrest.

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It was nine o'clock in the morning on Super Bowl Sunday when brand strategist Tammy Brook got the call: Her client, She'yaa "21 Savage" Bin Abraham-Joseph, had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As it turned out, the Atlanta-based hip-hop star was actually a U.K. citizen who'd come to the U.S. as a minor and had overstayed his visa.

Brook quickly went to work quarterbacking a response, coordinating a coalition of social justice groups with 21's management and legal teams. First, they aimed to reclaim his narrative-the ICE episode initially spawned scores of cheeky posts about the 26-year-old rapper's heritage-and second, they wanted to raise awareness of the 30 Under 30 alum 's status as a Dreamer, hoping a groundswell of public support could help get him released. And it did, after nine harrowing days.

"I really appreciate all of the coalition coming together on my behalf to fight for me," 21 Savage tells Forbes via electronic message. "It's rare to meet people who don't want anything from you other than to help you."

His release was far from a given, and that coalition-to be sure, one whose scale certainly isn't available to the average detainee-showed one way of countering aggressive immigration enforcement in the current climate. Some of the most prominent names in the social justice world were involved. Shortly after the news of 21's detention broke, Brook received a call from the office of her client Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter, and started texting with Alida Garcia, vice president of FWD.us (the immigrant advocacy outfit founded by Mark Zuckerberg). By the following morning, the groups backing 21 Savage swelled to include UndocuBlack, Define American, United We Dream and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, in addition to Black Lives Mater.

Many of Brook's contacts came from working with the Obama administration's Office of Public Engagement, and now she had aligned with them on a different sort of call to action. The coalition helped circulate graphics on 21's situation and get them into the hands of influential figures with massive social followings. Within 48 hours, celebrities from Cardi B to Jay-Z were raising awareness for 21's cause; the latter even hired another lawyer, Alex Spiro, for 21's team. Cullors, meanwhile, started a petition on Color of Change that quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of signatures thanks to the coalition's social amplification.

"The conversation was: He's been detained wrongfully, and we are hoping to quickly resolve this," says Brook. "We are hoping that this will be swift, and if it's not, then we're going to have a very long road ahead of us."

As the coalition mobilized mainstream support for 21 Savage, who has lived in Atlanta for two decades and has three children in the area, his growing team of lawyers plugged away on the legal side. Veteran Los Angeles attorney Dina LaPolt had already been working with a local immigration lawyer in Atlanta, and she brought in reinforcements in the form of another attorney, Charles Kuck, to help run operations on the ground.

21 Savage already had what's known as a U visa pending. According to his team, ICE was aware of his status and hadn't tried to detain him-until he made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon's show in early February, performing his song "A Lot" with a new verse that took shots at U.S. immigration policy. He was pulled over driving home from a concert in Atlanta less than a week later; Kuck says 21 overheard an officer say "We got him" as the rapper was transferred to an ICE vehicle.

"You don't have to have probable cause to detain somebody," says LaPolt. "That's the problem with these immigration laws. They're terrible ... if I'm a local law enforcement agency and I don't like what you're driving, your car looks better than mine, I don't like your music, I don't like what you stand for, I'm just going to call ICE and pull you over."

According to Kuck, ICE agents told 21 he'd be deported over a prior drug conviction, despite the rapper's protests that the crime had been vacated-expunged from his record-and therefore wasn't grounds for deportation (an ICE spokesperson declined to comment on the matter). Kuck and the legal team made a similar argument in the days following the Super Bowl, but the rapper remained in custody.

Once 21's co-manager Kei Henderson figured out where he was being held, she drove with 21's mother and legal team to the facility, four hours from Atlanta-it "looked like a jail," she says-for a visit. Henderson wasn't allowed in; she had to wait in the car while the others spoke with 21. The rapper's mother focused on keeping him in a positive mindset while the legal team talked over the state of his case, hoping to get him out ahead of a planned performance at the Grammys. That didn't seem to move the authorities.

"On Friday, they made a final decision-which they apparently made in headquarters at ICE-not to release him," says Kuck. "We found that out like six o'clock on a Friday night. So at that point, there's nothing we can do, and during that week, there was no hearing."

With 21 Savage still in detention, he couldn't perform "Rockstar," his duet with Post Malone that was up for Record of the Year and Best Rap/Sung Performance. Yet it seemed the Grammys could be another opportunity to raise awareness, and Brook organized a public service announcement called " 21 Ways You Could Be Detained If You're Undocumented In America " ahead of the ceremony, featuring musicians from Kendrick Lamar to DJ Khaled-and a call to sign the Color of Change petition.

"At first I was like, 'Are these [petitions] really important?'" Henderson recalls asking the coalition's members. "But ... they humanized immigration because it was like, 'Oh, anyone can be detained. Even someone as big as 21 Savage.'"

Outside of a peaceful protest at the Grammy Museum, though, music's biggest night could have been bigger for 21. Post Malone performed "Rockstar," but his 21 Savage shirt wasn't visible on the telecast. 21's co-manager said his team was only given tickets last-minute and didn't attend. Neither did Donald Glover, who won Song of the Year for "This Is America," another track on which 21 appeared (albeit briefly). The most prominent mention came from Glover's cowriter, Ludwig Göransson, who said "21 Savage should be here right now" while being played off the stage.

The ongoing grassroots push behind 21 would prove more potent than the Grammys. Shortly after the ceremony, with 21 Savage still in detention, dozens of cardboard file boxes filled with some 450,000 Color of Change petition signatures were delivered to ICE's Atlanta headquarters while protesters, including 21 Savage's team and scores of fans, rallied through a downpour.

"That was incredibly important because it was not just about the petition-gathering, but it was also about getting more awareness out about what was happening to 21," says Black Lives Matters' Cullors. "And getting more awareness out about what's happening with black immigrants and the history of criminalizing black people ... black immigrants are criminalized two times, both by their immigration status and because of racial injustice."

At the same time, Kuck and the legal team went back to work, discovering that 21 had been set for a bond hearing the Tuesday after the Grammys. When they showed up, they received relatively good news: The judge agreed to set a bail bond-fairly high, at $100,000-but one that 21, richer than most detainees, was able to pay. He was released after nine days in custody, buoyed by the help of a coalition with a scope unheard of for just about anyone in his position.

21's case is still pending; given the state of U.S. immigration courts, it could languish for months or years. He has emerged from detention as something of a cause célèbre in the entertainment industry, and one of the more high-profile Dreamers in the country. So why didn't he just come out and publicly declare his immigration status earlier on? Brook believes he knew his paperwork was pending and trusted the process.

"I think he was just trying to do everything privately," says Brook, who with her firm FYI Brand Group recently helped 21 launch Bank Account, a financial literacy campaign for teens. "It's a blessing if this all shakes out and he's this free Dreamer that can stay in America and be with his children and be in the only country he knows."

For now, 21 Savage is free-sort of. Though he can move about the United States, he can't travel abroad, limiting his earning opportunities. He has resumed playing gigs, with an average nightly gross sitting north of $50,000, according to Pollstar; his paychecks for large festivals like Lollapalooza, where he's scheduled to play in August, are likely much higher.

In any case, 21 feels the entire episode may have been worthwhile because of the attention it called to others in his position, the sort of detainees who can't pay a $100,000 bond or spark the mobilization of activists and celebrities in droves.

"I'm hopeful that some things will actually change," says 21. "Not just for me but for everyone in my shoes. It's all about wanting a better life, we should all be entitled to seek that."
For more on the business of music, check out my Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind and follow me on Twitter.

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Freeing 21 Savage: Inside The Effort That Got A Rapper Released From ICE Detention

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It was nine o'clock in the morning on Super Bowl Sunday when brand strategist Tammy Brook got the call: Her client, She'yaa "21 Savage" Bin Abraham-Joseph, had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As it turned out, the Atlanta-based hip-hop star was actually a U.K. citizen who'd come to the U.S.