A Blog Posting by Kai Huschke of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from November 29, 2016.

Shonto Pete. Otto Zehm. Scott Creach. It’s very likely these names mean nothing to you. Pete, Zehm, and Creach were all victims of police violence in Spokane, Washington in the last 10 years.

Shonto Pete was shot in the back of the head by an off-duty police officer. Pete survived and the officer was found not guilty.

Otto Zehm, a developmentally disabled man, was beaten to death at a convenience store by the Spokane police. Seven officers were involved but only one was found guilty. One of the non-guilty officers shot and killed a homeless man a year later. He was again found not guilty.

Scott Creach, a pastor and local businessman, was shot and killed by a Spokane county sheriff on the property of his nursery business. That officer was found not guilty and is still on the force.

The stories of Shonto Pete, Otto Zehm, and Scott Creach are stories I know. I live in Spokane. The abuse and termination of their lives by official fiat wasn’t deemed newsworthy by the national media.

Nationally speaking however, the story of Michael Brown may ring a bell. Two years ago Brown, an 18 year-old, unarmed black man, was shot by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri. That incident sparked massive protests demanding justice (the officer was eventually found not guilty) and a whole lot of promises around police accountability. It also propelled the Black Lives Matter movement into world view.

After the media spectacle created around Michael Brown’s unavenged murder, the cameras turned their gaze to Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in North Charleston and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. There have been countless victims of state-sanctioned and protected police violence pre and post Michael Brown, with the vast majority of those human stories never captivating the cable news networks’ attention or making it to the front page of national newspapers – let alone local ones. The media is fickle about what it considers sensational enough to bookend its ubiquitous commercial advertising. …

To read the entire Blog, click HERE.