The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery

My son has taken up running of late. He wants to train to run in a 10 K. Back before the Coronavirus, he would run in a neighborhood adjacent to his office during his lunch hour. Suppose that one day during one of his runs he was gunned down by a couple of vigilantes who wrongly suspected him of a burglary in that neighborhood. Then imagine that the two vigilantes were a black father and son. Cops arrive at the scene and quickly determine that they have probable cause to arrest the two killers but when they present their evidence to the district attorney, who is also black, she refuses to do so because one of the killers used to work for her. The killers go free for two months, my son’s murder in cold blood is ignored and there is no justice for him. How would any of you expect me to react to such injustice? 

But Doug, you might say, wouldn’t this story be just as tragic without mentioning the race of the people involved? Sure it would. But that’s exactly the point. Try to imagine this happening where the victim is white, the assailants and the district attorneys are black and no arrest is made until a video surfaces two months later? You can’t. Because it never would happen. That is the tragedy of what has happened to Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. It took three district attorneys to finally summon the gumption to arrest Gregory and Travis McMichael for the brutal murder and it took a leaked video splashed all over social media to accomplish that. 

I have written many times in this space about the two separate but unequal systems of justice in this country, one for the rich, powerful and well-connected, and a second for everybody else. This is not a distinctly American problem. It is as old as justice itself. But too often in this country, the people most victimized by the injustices of the system are either black or brown. It can’t be denied by any reasonable person. It is a stain on us and should make all of us angry. I cannot speak for this young man’s family. I can’t begin to understand what they are going through right now. But, there’s one thing I do know. If the victim were my son, I would become the Glynn County Police Department’s worst nightmare.

The attorney for the victim’s family said it best, “They did not arrest the killers of Ahmaud Arbery because they saw the video, they arrested the killers of Ahmaud Arbery because we saw the video.”

Shameful.