Portrait of the Columbus Police Department, May 28,2020

Thursday, May 28, the first night of protests in Columbus, OH for the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. People in Columbus and the surrounding area came out that night to protest police violence and excessive use of force—- but they didn’t expect to see it first hand that night. This Columbus Ohio moment—in the painting— was caught on video by Bryan Battle Jr (link below) and showed a Columbus Police officer assaulting a protester that turned a justice-demanding, but overall peaceful, protest into an extremely aggressive police action that night. As you can see, some of the protesters are loud, demanding answers, others are pleading for answers. The police were dressed and armed for “violent protesters.” But they weren’t getting that.

The moment the officer pushes the protester, the crowd moves back, and screams, and then all police start overreacting with pepper spray. The protester did not retaliate, as you can see he was pulled back out of harms way by his friends, but the police began pepper spraying the whole crowd at random after this moment. This painting was inspired by that video. It is from a frame I stilled 8-9 seconds into the video. I painted it first, but then I contacted the videographer to ask permission—and to show him what I had created. He knows about this painting. His parents have a print of it. The original footage can be found here (the 14 seconds of the incident.  The raw footage is a little bit lower, if you scroll down you will find 1:19 video of the full incident plus what it caused that night. Battle writes as text to the video, “Downtown Columbus and this is how it all started. #Justice #ColumbusOhio #DowntownColumbus” . ) I am grateful for those who record history and who put themselves in danger to do so. This was the first summer of COVID, and no one knew how COVID might spread with the protests (we learned from this that masks outside, even in tight groups, did NOT spread COVID). This is a portrait of the Columbus Police Department—not the one they want, but the one many people remember. It captures them causing the moment that would then need their Force to stop. It is an excuse for force. A trigger. A spark. It is how I think of them. This wasn’t the last moment—-there were other protests, other police “actions” in Columbus, in Seattle, in Minneapolis, in every big city. Those moments of police violence are what we remember.

#blacklivesmatter #abolishthepolice #defundthepolice

I painted this on the day after it happened—for a week. I did it out of anger, a sense of recording injustice, a sense of powerlessness against the police, and I’m sure fear, guilt, and shame were mixed in with the paint too, as I was too frightened of COVID to go out to participate in the protests, and frightened of potential police violence too, but I watched social media as a witness every night. While I didn’t know what I could do to help, I didn’t want to forget what this moment looked like—when I saw other happy photo ops and media designed to make me feel safe with them, protected, photos meant to erase the idea that the police will not protect protesters, and that they can and will start violence so that they can end it publicly. It’s so easy for some of us to go back to feeling “safe” —-certainly there are many TV programs that help us empathize with the police. But many communities cannot return to that belief—-they have images like this seared into them, or images like the string of killings of unarmed black citizens by the police that culminated in the murder of George Floyd—- that prompted these peaceful, legal protests. Despite everything, people peacefully protest.