The Unseen Cost of Normalized Violence: Corey Ruiz’s Death and America’s Endless Cycle of Grief
Let’s start with a brutal truth: Corey Ruiz’s funeral wasn’t just a mourning of one life lost—it was a funeral for America’s conscience. When a 38-year-old Black man is shot 14 times by police after pulling a knife during a struggle over stolen bikes, and the public’s primary takeaway is the number of bullets fired rather than the fact that this pattern never ends, we’ve normalized something monstrous. I’ll admit—I’ve watched this play out so many times that even writing this feels like reciting a eulogy for a country that refuses to change.
The Viral Video Dilemma: Why Shock Fails to Shock Anymore
The footage of Ruiz’s death went ‘viral,’ which is both the only reason we’re talking about him and the saddest indictment of our media ecosystem. What makes this particularly fascinating—and infuriating—is how society now treats police brutality like a content genre. A video goes viral, outrage spikes, protests happen, then silence. Repeat. By the time Rev. Al Sharpton stood at Ruiz’s funeral declaring, ‘This could be my brother,’ I couldn’t help but wonder: When does empathy stop being performative? The viral video isn’t evidence anymore; it’s a spectacle. And worse, we’ve become numb to the horror it documents.
The ‘Criminal Record’ Red Herring
Let’s talk about Ruiz’s 40 convictions. Personally, I think listing a dead man’s rap sheet as a ‘neutral fact’ is a coward’s way of implying he ‘had it coming.’ Yes, he struggled with mental health. Yes, he was homeless. But why do we dissect his past like it justifies his death? If a man is drowning, do we blame him for not knowing how to swim? Ruiz’s history of misdemeanors—including ‘robbery by force’—is presented as context, but what it really reveals is society’s refusal to distinguish between ‘criminal’ and ‘human.’ His ex-partner’s anguish over his daughter walking past his ‘dying grounds’ every day? That’s the part we should fixate on, not his arrest record.
Madison’s Bloody Pattern: A Town Trapped in a Time Loop
Madison, Wisconsin, isn’t some outlier here. Tony Robinson killed in 2015. Paul Heenan in 2012. Same streets. Same police department. Different years. From my perspective, this isn’t coincidence—it’s design. When a city’s law enforcement can’t break a cycle of lethal force against Black men, despite national scrutiny, it’s not ‘bad apples.’ It’s an orchard gone rotten. And let’s be honest: The DA’s office will ‘review’ Ruiz’s case, just as they did for Robinson and Heenan, and we’ll get to say ‘nothing new under the sun’ again when no charges stick.
The Bigger Lie: ‘Lethal Force Was Necessary’
The official story? Officers tried Tasers. Failed. Shot him. But here’s what many people don’t realize: ‘Failed Tasers’ are a get-out-of-jail-free card for police departments. How often do we hear about ‘malfunctioning’ devices after the bullets fly? If you take a step back and think about it, Ruiz was injured during the struggle—yet the priority became subduing him, not de-escalating. A knife in a homeless man’s hand becomes a death sentence, but a school shooter gets taken alive? The double standard isn’t accidental. It’s structural.
What Ruiz’s Death Really Cost Us
Elsa Ruiz’s words—‘He was not a nobody’—haunt me. Not because they’re profound, but because she shouldn’t have to say them. Her son’s humanity shouldn’t be contingent on a civil rights lawyer’s presence or a reverend’s eulogy. What this really suggests is that in America, your value as a person is inversely proportional to how many times you’ve been failed by the system. Homeless? Mentally ill? Criminal record? Suddenly, your life isn’t just yours. It’s collateral damage in a war on the ‘undeserving.’
The Unspoken Future: When Will We Tire of Mourning?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Corey Ruiz’s funeral will be forgotten in a week. The flowers will wilt. The hashtags will fade. And when the next viral video drops, we’ll repeat this ritual. Unless… what? Unless we start asking why we’re so quick to accept these deaths as inevitable. Unless we confront the reality that policing in America isn’t broken—it’s functioning exactly as designed to control marginalized communities. Personally, I’m tired of writing variations of this article. Aren’t you tired of reading them? The deeper question isn’t how Ruiz died. It’s why we’re still pretending we don’t know how to prevent the next one.
