In 2014, a Phoenix cop killed 34-year-old Rumain Brisbon. Police got a tip that Brisbon was selling drugs, so they went to find him. When Brisbon tried to pull what officers said they thought was a gun from his pocket, they opened fire. Only he didn't have a gun at all — just a bottle of oxycodone.
This is not an unusual story for anyone paying attention to the news in America over the last 50 years. Brisbon was one of countless casualties of our ill-conceived War on Drugs. We occasionally catch the names of collateral damage — Breonna Taylor is a notable example — but for the most part, we've accepted the constant buzz of unnecessary assault, state-sanctioned home invasions, robbery and death as background noise. The War on Drugs is a war, after all, and we can't be expected to monitor every injustice in war, can we?
