Ta’Kiya Young, an aspiring social worker and 21-year-old pregnant Black woman, was killed by Ohio police outside a Kroger grocery store in Blendon Township, Ohio, on August 24. Young’s killing has once again spotlighted the pervasiveness of police violence and the racial disparities in who law enforcement harms, reviving questions about the need for more accountability.
Young’s family has said the officer’s actions were a “criminal act,” while the Blendon Township police department has described both officers as victims of assault, putting the shooter on administrative leave and keeping the second officer on staff. Body camera footage that police released of the shooting last week has only prompted more calls for the arrest of the officer who shot the gun and local demonstrations in the Columbus suburbs. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is doing an independent investigation into the incident, police say.
Young’s death, along with other recent fatal encounters with law enforcement, has renewed national attention on police killings, and law enforcement’s disproportionate shootings of Black Americans. Mapping Police Violence, a group that collects data on police shootings, found though Black Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the population, they comprised at least 20 percent of the people killed by law enforcement so far in 2023.
Previously, police violence and bias in law enforcement came under greater scrutiny following the Black Lives Matter protests launched in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Despite calls for — and some attempts at — reform, the number of police killings has remained high, with 2022 becoming the deadliest year in at least a decade, according to a Mapping Police Violence analysis. This year has been slightly less violent than the last, but police have still killed more than 726 people — a rate of almost three people per day.
What we know about Young’s shooting
Last Friday, police…
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