On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was shot by police officer Darren Wilson in the northern St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. Within the next year, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore were all killed by police officers, each setting off protests surrounding police use of force in their respective cities.
These incidents caused Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery to question the data around police shootings. His inquiry spurred The Post's investigative data-gathering project The Fatal Force which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
Lowery's experiences traveling across the country covering police shootings are chronicled in his book They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement. In it, he also describes the events that led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and how black activists used social media to elevate their message.
In this Friday Forum, Shaker Heights High School graduate and Pulitzer Prize winner Wesley Lowery discusses the ongoing struggle between law enforcement, race, and justice.
