Remembering Bilal Abdullah: Digging Deeper on “Illegal Guns”, Public Safety and Police Violence

The shooting of Bilal Addullah rocked Baltimore, yet police used body cam footage to deem the shooting “justified”. This episode takes a nuanced look at the concept of the “bad guy with an illegal gun” used to justify Abdullah’s death, arguing the inability to see gun carrying as a rational response to conditions of Black life united center and left responses to the killing. We compare Abdullah’s death with an incident in Baltimore County, showing the role race plays in police response to gun carrying and threats. We conclude with an analysis of how progressive rhetoric public health and police reform has been coopted to justify more policing, and how the need to center community control of public safety is the key to getting community support for shifting resources from policing to community needs.
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