By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

On May 3rd, 2024, Roger Fortson was on a video call with his girlfriend when a knock came at his door. Fortson, a 23 year-old Black man, was a Senior Airman in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Florida. Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy Eddie Duran had responded to a domestic disturbance call at the apartment complex. Building staff directed him to Fortson’s unit. After the deputy pounded on the door, Fortson opened it, holding his left hand up, palm out, posing no threat. In his other hand he held his legally owned pistol, as was his right. Within seconds, Duran fired six shots at point blank range. Fortson fell to the ground. As he lay dying, he uttered his final words, “I can’t breathe.”

Within weeks, Duran was fired and charged with manslaughter, facing 30 years in prison. He is currently out on bail awaiting trial. Meanwhile, civil rights attorney Ben Crump is representing Fortson’s family, and recently filed a civil suit against Duran, Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden, as well as the apartment complex owner and the staff person who wrongly directed Duran to Fortson’s apartment.

“The FaceTime video of his girlfriend is just horrible,” Crump said, speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour, not long after Fortson’s death. “You hear him saying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and you hear the police officer barking orders, ‘Don’t move. Don’t move.’ And we lose this young man, one of the brightest lights for his family and our community…U.S. Airman Roger Fortson was an American hero. He was a patriot. He was a young man who was doing all the right things. He was trying to provide for his mother, his 10-year-old sister Harmony, his 16-year-old brother André. He was highly intelligent. He was special ops. He was the best that we had to offer America.”

As Crump was filing the lawsuit this week, another case of a death of an innocent Black man while in police custody was in the news. Three officers formerly with the Memphis Police Department were in state court, facing murder charges for the death of Tyre Nichols. Nichols, a 29 year-old Black father who worked at FedEx was pulled over by police as he drove home from work on January 7th, 2023.

Ben Crump is also working on this case, and described on Democracy Now! how Nichols died:

“Tyre Nichols was one of the worst police videos of brutality that we’ve ever witnessed. Tyre Nichols was about two blocks from his home. He didn’t break any laws. But there was a SCORPION unit, this special tactic unit at the Memphis Police Department that was allowed to harass and violate the constitutional rights of Black people in a certain section of Memphis, Tennessee, under the guise that they were deterring crime…they literally beat him to death. And if it was not for the camera on the night pole, they would have probably gotten away with it. But that camera showed us everything.”

The five officers, all Black men, were part of a notoriously violent police team known as the SCORPION unit, the “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.” The unit was disbanded after Nichols’ death.

This week, a jury found former officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith not guilty of murder, in a state trial. In a separate federal case, they were found guilty of witness tampering, and await sentencing for that conviction. Two others were also convicted on the federal charge, and pleaded guilty to state charges and will avoid trial. All five are expected to serve time in prison.

Police violence is a persistent problem in the United States, disproportionately victimizing people of color, especially Black men. According to the non-profit Mapping Police Violence project, just this year there have been 401 police killings in 45 states and the District of Columbia (as of April 24th), with over 20% of the victims Black, far out of proportion to their representation in the overall US population.

President Trump, while campaigning in 2024, openly called for police brutality. At one Pennsylvania rally, decrying shoplifting, he said, “Now, if you had one really violent day … one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately.”

ProPublica reports that Trump’s Justice Department is expected to freeze consent decrees, or court-ordered oversight of problematic police departments across the country, from Minneapolis to Louisville, Kentucky to Memphis. This makes even more vital the work of grassroots groups to hold police accountable for unlawful conduct and excessive force.

The GOP-run Congress recently pressured Washington, DC to erase the words on a public plaza that became famous in 2020 as millions protested the police murder of George Floyd. But you can’t erase the message: Black Lives Matter.