“The father of Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Black man shot seven times by a Kenosha, Wis., police officer, told the Chicago Sun-Times that his son is handcuffed to his hospital bed.

‘I hate it that he was laying in that bed with the handcuff onto the bed,’ Blake’s father said Thursday, the day after he visited his son in the hospital. ‘He can’t go anywhere. Why do you have him cuffed to the bed?’”

The Hill

The arrest of black men often goes sideways because law enforcement officials don’t see them as citizens who are innocent until proven guilty but as wild animals who need to be subdued by any means necessary.

In August 23, 2020 Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old African American was shot by police in the back seven times at point blank range as he was attempting to get into his car. The cops didn’t consider other less lethal means of subduing him, nor did they seem to care that his three children between the ages of three and eight were in the back seat. They didn’t perceive Blake as a human being, let alone as a father, only as a thug who needed to be put down. Does a trophy hunter care that lion cubs are frolicking with their father when he kills the lion?

The incident occurred in Kenosha, Wisconsin, but it could have occurred in any city, for we have seen the murder of black men by police take place in Ferguson, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, and just about every town and city in our country.

Blake is paralyzed in critical condition fighting for his life in a hospital, and his dehumanization continues, evidenced by the fact that he is handcuffed to his hospital bed.

After visiting his son in the hospital, Blake’s father said: He can’t go anywhere. Why do you have him cuffed to the bed? A rhetorical question, as every black man in America knows that the criminal justice system doesn’t miss any opportunity to humiliate and dehumanize black men.

“Why is Blake cuffed to his bed”, is only one of dozens of questions that this horrible incident brings to mind? Why did the cop shoot a black suspect seven times in the back? Why do these executions of black suspects occur with horrible regularity? Why do almost all of these killer cops escape justice with only a slap on the wrist? Why hasn’t the government taken concrete steps to stop this epidemic of executions of people of color?

Why? Why? Dear God, Why?