Attorney for Arbery and Taylor says it's ‘business as usual when it comes to criminal justice in America’
The killings of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky show a disturbing trend, according to civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump. Crump represents the families of Arbery and Taylor and says the coronavirus pandemic has not slowed down injustice in the country.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
BENJAMIN CRUMP: I'm attorney Ben Crump. I'm an attorney with the family of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
- No justice!
- No peace!
- No justice!
- No peace!
BENJAMIN CRUMP: With the coronavirus pandemic finally starting to give America the opportunity to reopen, we're seeing it's business as usual when it comes to criminal justice in America, especially with the killing of unarmed black people, which is just unnecessary, unjustifiable, when you look at all the objective evidence. With Ahmaud Arbery, we actually witnessed a lynching of a young black man who was simply jogging in 2020.
And the murderous father and son duo who committed these crimes were not arrested. They got to sleep in their beds peacefully for over 10 weeks. Can you imagine if the roles were reversed and it was Ahmaud Arbery's father and himself in a pickup truck with a shotgun and a .357 magnum chasing a young, white jogger who was simply riding through the community and he ends up being killed? Can you imagine what would have happened to them?
It's very important that we continue to tell people, if you ran for Maud, you need to stand for Bre. Because black women lives matter, too. And her tragedy was just as atrocious as what happened to Ahmaud Arbery.
I am in a unique position as an attorney for the family of Ahmaud Arbery and the family of Breonna Taylor, who was executed in her own apartment by three Louisville metropolitan police officers, who were executing in a dangerous-- and I believe-- unconstitutional "no knock" search warrant.
Breonna was an EMT. She was a first responder. She worked at two hospitals. She attended the University of Kentucky. She had no criminal history whatsoever. And everybody from her family and her job said she was just an angel of a person, that she went into the medical profession because she always wanted to help people.
Do African Americans have a right to the Second Amendment? Because never has there been such a vivid distinction of self-defense in black and white in America as with Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor's killings.
- Whose street?
- Our street!
- When Charlamagne says that African Americans need to exercise their rights to the Second Amendment, I think he's absolutely right. We as American citizens have every right to bear arms and protect our homes and protect our castles and protect our families and protect our person. And so, you know, we can never ever say that African Americans don't have an absolute right to the Second Amendment. Because we, too, are American citizens.
