Here’s How Many Black People Have Been Killed By Police Since Colin Kaepernick Began Protesting

Kaepernick’s decision to sit or take a knee during the national anthem first drew attention after his team’s Aug.

But the problem Kaepernick wants to highlight has continued. And on Monday, it was back in the news again, after police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, released multiple videos that showed the fatal shooting of Terence Crutcher.

The videos show that 40 year old Crutcher, like so many other black men, was unarmed with his hands in the air when police officers shot and killed him as he returned to his car, which had stalled in the middle of a roadway. The videos run contrary to the department’s initial statements about the shooting, which claimed that Crutcher had ignored officers’ warning to raise his hands. In 22 days. Roughly 22 percent of the victims have been black. Police have killed more than 780 people so far in 2016, according to The Guardian’s numbers. At least 193 of those people or about 25 percent were black. Of the 15 black people killed since Kaepernick’s demonstration started, at least 11 were shot, according to The Washington Post’s tracker of fatal police shootings.

The white officer who shot Crutcher, Betty Shelby, was placed on paid administrative leave while the department investigates the caseanother issue Kaepernick highlighted when he spoke out against police killings.

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“To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way,” Kaepernick said. “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Terence Crutcher, 40, is one of at least 15 African Americans to die during encounters with police since Kaepernick began protesting before NFL games in late August.

Kaepernick’s message has spread across the sports world since the start of the NFL season. Players on a number of NFL teams including the Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos and Tennessee Titans joined his demonstration during the first week of the NFL season. Women’s National Team matches in recent weeks. And NBA players Nick Young and Stephen Curry have spoken out in support of Kaepernick, with Young saying that he may kneel before the anthem once his season begins next month. High school football players across the country have joined in as well.

Some of the protests have drawn the ire of police. In Miami, the union that represents the Broward County Sheriff’s Office called on the department to stop providing security details for Dolphins’ games after four members of the team knelt during the anthem last week. “In certain professions,” the head of the union said, “an individual’s freedom of speech must take a back seat to the organization or government entity that they choose to represent.”

The NFL Players Association, which has stood behind Kaepernick’s right to protest, fired back at that statement Monday. “Don’t we stop being the land of the free and the home of the brave when a citizen is asked to take a ‘backseat’ for expressing his freedom by those sworn to defend it?” DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA’s executive director, said in a statement. “Players don’t stop being men and citizens just because they are wearing a jersey.”

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And while many have questioned how a black athlete could qualify as oppressed, recent cases highlight that Kaepernick and other black athletes are also at risk of experiencing police violence.

James Blake, a retired tennis player, was misidentified as a robbery suspect and tackled by NYPD officers in September 2015. The same year, NBA player Thabo Sefolosha’s leg was broken in an altercation with NYPD officers; Sefolosha is currently suing the department. John Henson, a player for the Milwaukee Bucks, said employees of a high end jewelry store locked the door and told him to leave before police arrived. And in 2011, police in Florida told former NFL running back Warrick Dunn they pulled him over because he “had the characteristics of people transporting drugs and guns,” he said.