#Minneapolis winston smith skin#

im saying my goodbye to all my people tonight just cuz im not sure no more if ima die soon.'īy the time of Castile's killing, Smith's criminal record amounted to a string of misdemeanors.

#Minneapolis winston smith skin#

Smith declared on Facebook that cops had started a war and should be shot he made a similar post following the police killing of Castile two years later.Ī father to two daughters by then, Smith wondered on Facebook if he'd live to see them grow up, 'but thats not promised due to my skin color. Then an officer in Ferguson, Mo., killed Michael Brown in 2014, prompting an outcry that positioned Black Lives Matter as a national force. Winston Smith, shown in an image from an Instagram video, often took to social media to talk about his fears and his outrage about police violence. 'He always used to say … 'The police are always messing with me,'' she said. Smith told her in his early 20s that if his life ended early, it would be because of the police. Relatives recall police arresting Smith on minor charges as a juvenile - once, his sister Tamara Wilson said, he was in jail on a curfew violation from Friday night until Monday morning. In their tough Minneapolis neighborhood, he was a goofball, not a gangster - 'goofy as hell,' as Hughes put it. Some bullied him for his dorky glasses and skinny frame, but Smith was not a fighter. 'Winston was happier than anybody I ever knew,' said his friend Westin Hughes.īorn in 1989, Smith grew up on the South Side.

His countenance was relentlessly cheery he seldom spoke of his problems. He was a never-ending whir of motion, waking up early and falling asleep late, bouncing from one place to the next, talking big, dreaming avidly. And rather than serve his sentence for a felony gun conviction, Smith sometimes wondered about shooting it out with the cops instead.Ī year later, it's possible to see Smith's decision not to surrender as a testament to the visceral fear and distrust caused by a relentless cycle of law enforcement killings.īut his fate also invites difficult questions: What is the line between paranoia and a justified distrust of police? Between refusing to participate in a racially biased legal system and evading responsibility for one's crimes? Between knowing the risks a Black suspect faces at the hands of law enforcement and writing a self-fulfilling prophecy?įor someone who at times seemed fixated on his own demise, Smith was known to many as a fearless force of life. On social media, he called for people to shoot police in retaliation for the deaths of Philando Castile, George Floyd and Wright. He shared his visions of an early death with family members, and as his legal woes mounted, he told friends he was having nightmares about cops gunning him down.Īt other times Smith seemed to welcome such a showdown. It was also an ending that the 32-year-old budding comic and father of three had long seen coming. Smith's death atop a Minneapolis parking ramp last June - coming just a couple of months after the killing of Daunte Wright - marked yet another grim instance of a Black man perishing at the hands of Minnesota law enforcement.

Task force members fired more than a dozen bullets into the vehicle. 'I'm going to die, I'm going to die.'Īnd then, authorities said, Smith showed a gun. 'I don't want to go to jail,' he said, sweating heavily. Inside the car, his passenger pleaded with him to obey. marshals surrounded the Maserati, yelling for Winston Boogie Smith Jr.