America’s Legacy of Blood: Police Murders of Black Americans and the System That Shields Them
By: The Zeitgeist Editorial Team
Photo of Brandon Durham. Credit: Brandon Durham/Instagram
Imagine calling for help in a moment of terror, only to have your life ended by the very people who promised to protect you. This isn’t just an anomaly—it’s the American way of policing, a system so deeply entrenched in racial violence and oppression that Black Americans are disproportionately turned from citizens into statistics. Brandon Durham, a Black father killed by Las Vegas police after calling 911 for help, is just the latest name added to a long and bloody list.
This is not a story of “bad apples” or isolated incidents. This is the system functioning exactly as designed: protecting property and power at the expense of Black lives.
When the Call for Help Becomes a Death Sentence
Brandon Durham’s story is horrifyingly familiar. A home invasion, a call to 911, and a desperate fight to protect his 15-year-old daughter. But when police arrived, they didn’t assess the situation or ask questions. Instead, they kicked down the door and shot Durham as he struggled with an armed intruder. Durham died protecting his family. The intruder walked away unharmed.
Just a few months earlier, Sonya Massey, a Black woman in Springfield, Illinois, suffered the same fate. After calling 911 to report a prowler, she was shot in her own kitchen by an officer who claimed to feel “threatened.” The officer, Sean Grayson, now faces murder charges—a rare accountability in a sea of unchecked violence.
These aren’t isolated cases. They are chapters in a book we’ve been forced to read over and over again. And the title of that book? American Policing: Racism in Uniform.
The Names We Will Never Forget
Brandon Durham and Sonya Massey’s tragic deaths join a staggering list of Black individuals murdered by police:
Amadou Diallo (1999): Shot 41 times in New York while reaching for his wallet.
Sean Bell (2006): Gunned down on the morning of his wedding by NYPD officers who fired 50 bullets.
Oscar Grant (2009): Executed while lying face down on a train platform in Oakland.
Eric Garner (2014): Strangled to death in a chokehold, his cries of “I can’t breathe” ignored.
Tamir Rice (2014): A 12-year-old child playing with a toy gun in Cleveland, shot within seconds of police arriving.
Atatiana Jefferson (2019): Killed in her own home after a neighbor called for a welfare check.
Breonna Taylor (2020): Fatally shot in her apartment during a botched no-knock raid.
George Floyd (2020): Suffocated under a Minneapolis police officer’s knee for over nine minutes.
These are just the names that made headlines. There are countless others whose stories never reach the public eye—each one a life cut short, a family shattered, and a community left mourning.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
According to the Mapping Police Violence project, U.S. law enforcement killed 1,329 people in 2023—the deadliest year on record. Black individuals accounted for 27% of those deaths despite making up just 13% of the population. This isn’t a statistical quirk; it’s systemic oppression.
From 1980 to 2018, over 30,000 people were killed by police in the United States, with Black Americans consistently overrepresented. A study published in The Lancet found that over half of these deaths were misclassified, further obscuring the scale of police violence.
This isn’t just a matter of bad data. It’s deliberate erasure—a system protecting itself from accountability by burying the truth.
“Protect and Serve” Whom?
The history of American policing is rooted in racism. The earliest forms of organized law enforcement in the U.S. were slave patrols, tasked with capturing escaped enslaved people and suppressing uprisings. After slavery’s abolition, policing evolved to enforce Jim Crow laws, perpetuating racial segregation and economic inequality.
Today, the legacy of those patrols is alive and well. Black Americans are over-policed, over-incarcerated, and disproportionately killed in encounters with law enforcement. Meanwhile, officers are shielded by powerful unions, weak accountability structures, and a judicial system designed to excuse their actions.
For every officer like Sean Grayson who faces murder charges, there are hundreds who walk free. Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd was hailed as a landmark, but it’s the exception, not the rule. Most officers are never charged, and even fewer are convicted.
Reform Isn’t Enough
After each high-profile killing, we hear the same tired calls for reform: body cameras, implicit bias training, community policing. But these measures are band-aids on a gaping wound. They don’t address the fundamental problem: policing in America is a violent, racist institution that cannot be reformed.
What we need is abolition.
Redirect Funding: Move resources away from police departments and into community-led safety initiatives, mental health services, and education.
Invest in Alternatives: Create unarmed emergency response teams trained in de-escalation and conflict resolution.
Hold Police Accountable: Establish independent oversight bodies with the power to investigate, charge, and convict officers for misconduct.
A System Built on Violence Must Be Torn Down
Every time a Black life is stolen by police, the system insists it was a “mistake” or a “tragedy.” But these deaths aren’t mistakes. They are the inevitable result of a system built on control, coercion, and violence.
Brandon Durham didn’t have to die. Neither did Sonya Massey, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, or George Floyd. But as long as we continue to treat policing as a sacred institution, the blood will keep flowing.
This is more than a call for justice. It’s a call for revolution. The system that murdered Brandon Durham cannot be fixed—it must be dismantled. Only then can we build something better, something rooted in equity, compassion, and humanity.
Because Black lives aren’t just hashtags or headlines. They are lives. They are families, dreams, futures. And they deserve more than a system that sees them as expendable.
—The Zeitgeist