The Teyonah Parris Advocacy Account

He missed the school bus. So Brennan Walker, fourteen, walked the route from memory and got lost, and knocked on a door to ask for directions. A woman screamed. Her husband came down the stairs with a sh0tgun. Rochester Hills, Michigan. The morning of 12 April 2018. His phone was dead. He had never had to walk it before. He knocked. Through the glass he tried to explain he had missed the bus and needed to know which way the school was. The woman inside started shouting that he was trying to break in. Her husband, Jeffrey Zeigler, a retired firefighter, came downstairs with a sh0tgun. Brennan ran. Zeigler came out onto the porch and fired at the back of a running fourteen-year-old. The shot missed. It is on the house's own doorbell camera, which is why we are not relying on anybody's memory. Brennan kept running until he found someone to call his mother. Zeigler was charged and convicted of assault with intent to do great bodily harm and a firearm offence, and sentenced to four to ten years. Brennan's mother, Lisa Wright, said afterwards that she had taught him what to do if he got lost. Go to a house. Knock on a door. Ask an adult. Every parent teaches that. It is the single most basic instruction there is. He did it exactly right, and a man fired a shotgun at him for it. He was fourteen, and he was late for school. This is why in our book we confront the painful history too many people never hear. We must never forget these injustices Get yours: savvypurchase.samcart.com/pr…

She was EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT, getting her two children ready for school, when six officers arrived at the door with a warrant. Porcha Woodruff thought it was a joke. They were arresting her for carjacking. She and her fiancé asked them to check whether the suspect on the report was pregnant. They refused. Detroit, the morning of 16 February 2023. She is 32. Here is how they got to her. A woman had returned the victim's phone to a petrol station. Police ran facial recognition on the petrol station video. The software produced Porcha Woodruff. Then — and this is the part that turns a software error into a human one — they put her in a photo line-up using an **eight-year-old picture** from a 2015 arrest. They had her current driver's licence. They used the old photo. The victim picked it. A visibly, enormously pregnant woman was processed for robbery and carjacking. She was held and released that evening on a hundred-thousand-dollar personal bond. By the time she got out she was having contractions from the stress, and a medical centre recorded a low heart rate from dehydration. On 6 March the Wayne County Prosecutor dropped the case. Insufficient evidence. Her lawsuit calls the match what it was: an "unreliable facial recognition match." The police chief said the allegations were "very concerning." Think about the order of events once more, because it matters. The machine was wrong. Then a detective chose an eight-year-old photograph over the licence on file. Then six officers went to a house. Then nobody in that chain looked at a woman eight months pregnant and compared her to a report that did not mention a pregnant suspect. Her story is a reminder of why these injustices must be documented, remembered, and challenged. Get our book which documents over 150 of the crimes against Black people savvypurchase.samcart.com/pr…