Irvo Otieno was a 28-year-old Black man brought to the U.S. from Kenya when he was four, his family drawn by the “American dream.” That “dream” collided with reality, as shown on a surveillance video taken inside a psychiatric hospital in Virginia on March 6. You see pigs dragging Irvo, hands cuffed and legs shackled, in the admissions room, where he is laid out on the floor and pinned down—“from his braids down to his toes,” according to a statement in court by Dinwiddie Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill. At a certain point, seven Henrico County deputies and three medical staff members pile on Irvo—until he stops moving. Several others stand by, doing nothing to stop the deadly brutality.

Three days earlier, a neighbor had called the sheriffs when Irvo—experiencing severe mental distress—went into the neighbor's yard, picked up some lights, and came to their door. Irvo's mother, Caroline Ouko, called his psychiatrist for help to get her son specialized treatment that could include hospitalization. When she heard a knock on the door, she thought it was in response to her call to the doctor. Instead, 10-12 deputies, many with Tasers drawn, had come to arrest him. Caroline Ouko told them her son was having a mental health crisis and begged them not to use violence against him.

Irvo was taken under an emergency custody order from his home to a nearby hospital for evaluation. But when he arrived at the hospital, Irvo was quickly arrested on multiple charges for supposed “assaultive behavior” toward the pigs. They took Irvo to county jail where he was held for three days, denied urgently needed medications.

On the morning of his murder, a jail cell video shows Irvo being pepper sprayed and repeatedly beaten inside his cell. Without notifying Irvo's family, the pigs then took him—hands cuffed and legs shackled—to Virginia's psychiatric Central State Hospital in another county. That is where he was killed, just three hours after their arrival, during the intake process.

After the video was shown to the family, Caroline Ouko said: “What they did to my son was horrific. Horrific... He was treated worse than a dog.” She referred to his killers as “those 10 monsters, those 10 criminals.” Aware the video would soon go public, the county prosecutor rushed to charge the 10 (seven sheriff's deputies and three hospital staff) with second-degree murder and had them indicted in record time.

Irvo Otieno had played basketball and football at Douglas Freeman High School near Richmond, Virginia, and graduated as an honor student in 2012. He struggled with mental health problems in his teens, which first led to a breakdown when he was playing college football in California. He was brought back to Virginia, diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorder. Irvo had prior hospitalizations, but with proper medication his mother was in the main able to help him bring the illness under control. Irvo had developed a passion for music and was working to become a rapper—“Young Vo.” On January 7, 2021, he wrote on Facebook: there are “two justices in America, one for us and one for the white folks.”

Many who have watched the video of Irvo Otieno being killed feel viscerally the parallels with what happened to George Floyd in 2020, when he was murdered by a cop kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. Irvo is posing no threat to the pigs, not confrontational or aggressive. They have him cuffed and shackled, face down. But still they put all their weight on him, with some putting their knees on his neck.

George Floyd's murder by police awakened millions in this country and internationally to the never-ending brutality, oppression, and degradation of Black people and other oppressed people at the hands of the enforcers of this system. And it led to the beautiful uprising seen and felt around the world.

The murder of Tyre Nichols just two months ago by five Memphis pigs had people asking—again—why the hell do these gangster-pig murders keep going on? How can they be stopped?

All five of the Memphis pigs charged with killing Tyre Nichols are Black. In the murder of Irvo Otieno, five of the seven sheriff's deputies charged are Black, and one is a woman. What these examples and others show is that such brutality and murder come from a system which utilizes this level of murderous force against Black and other oppressed people as a matter of standard operating procedure. And the nationality, “race” or gender of the person charged with carrying this out does not matter—he or she will enforce the dictates of that system.

Enough! It's this monstrous system that gives rise to the daily terror and murder carried out by the police, especially against Black, Brown, and Native American people… a system that has to be overthrown and ended—through an actual revolution.