Released on December 15, 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This time, it happened in Columbus, Ohio. 

Casey Goodson, Jr. had just put his keys in the lock of his own home when he was shot three times in the back by a sheriff’s deputy. The only things he had in his hands were a face mask and sandwiches he had brought home for his family.  

Casey Goodson was, as his mother Tamala Payne said, “just a Black man coming home from a dentist’s appointment.  He didn’t do anything.” 

Like Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, and countless others, Casey Goodson was a victim of a gun culture that glorifies vigilantism and weaponizes racism.  Black communities are threatened by extremes of police brutality – their implicit racist bias and gun violence—which are too often all it takes to become a deadly combination.   

We must continue to say their names and demand justice, accountability, and reform. 

NOW renews our calls on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act., which would finally compile data on police misconduct, mandate implicit bias training, require police body cameras at all times, ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and fund more community-based programs that will make policing safer and more effective. 

We cannot stand by, waiting for this to happen again in another city, in another state. Black lives matter – and are more than just a trending hashtag. We must prove it with our actions and dismantle the culture of structural racism that has already taken away so many valuable lives. 

Contact: Press Team, press@now.org,