Last week, a white man was captured alive after a five-hour shootout with police at a Planned Parenthood clinic that claimed the lives of three and injured nine. Coming just days after the one-year anniversary of Tamir Rice’s death, and amid a number of high-profile police brutality protests, the violent incident has renewed a debate about race and policing in the United States.
On Friday, Robert Lewis Dear barricaded himself inside the health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he engaged in an ongoing fire-fight with police before being captured alive. Among the victims were a university police officer, a mother of two, and an Iraq War veteran with two children. At least five of the other injured victims were police officers.
Earlier that week, activists took the streets in Cleveland to mark one year since the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy, who was killed by police while playing in a park with a toy gun. It is legal to openly carry firearms in Ohio, yet video footage of the shooting shows police opening fire on the boy within just two seconds of their arrival in the park. Police were slow to provide medical attention to the boy, even detaining his sister when she tried to provide medical aid. He died the next day.