In my 2020 article, “Selling Out in Court: How Settlements Protect Police Abusers,” (1) I explained the court settlement process and how it works to shield cops and guards who murder and abuse people from accountability at taxpayer expense, and enables a culture of police\/guard impunity. I also explained how leeches like attorney Benjamin Crump uphold and benefit from this corrupt process and use it to exploit the victims of pig abuses and murder to profit handsomely and gain celebrity statuses.<\/p>\n
In a case that hits close to home for me and other members of UPROAR (Uniting Prisoners’ Relatives Organizing Against Repression) [2] , Crump has appeared and proven everything I wrote about the vile nature and purpose of court settlements and his role in upholding and exploiting it for his own profit and status.<\/p>\n
The case in question is that of Aubrey McKay, a 27-year-old Black man who was lynched by a mob of guards at Virginia’s notoriously abusive and racist supermax, Wallens Ridge State Prison, on June 4, 2025, exactly a month before he was set to be released from prison on his 28th birthday. The tragedy of Aubrey’s case was compounded by the fact that his already ailing mother had just been diagnosed with cancer and was awaiting his release so he could help her and accompany her to her chemotherapy treatments as he’d promised to do.<\/p>\n
Aubrey’s case had been swept under the rug by Virginia officials at all levels, who lyingly claimed that he was “found unresponsive” in his cell, when he had actually been beaten and stomped to death by a group of white guards while he was handcuffed behind his back and shackled at the ankles. The beating was captured on guards’ body cameras and prison surveillance cameras and was ruled a homicide by the coroner. Yet officials persistently lied and covered it up, and still refuse to prosecute Aubrey’s killers.<\/p>\n
The case gained public attention ONLY because individual advocates and groups like UPROAR persisted in publicly protesting his case.<\/p>\n
These efforts and the resulting publicity gained the attention of ambulance-chaser Ben Crump, who, true to form, jumped into the grieving family’s lap to exploit their tragedy and help hide the evidence of what was done to Aubrey from the public, in his efforts to “negotiate” a settlement with Aubrey’s killers and their protectors and gain as hefty a sum and fees as he could exploit the case for.<\/p>\n
As soon as I got word of Crump’s involvement, I referred members of UPROAR to my 2020 article and conducted a political education session on the matter, which was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube. I also had conversations with key individual supporters of Aubrey’s family who were involved in protesting Aubrey’s murder.<\/p>\n
As the weeks passed, these advocates would tell me that my 2020 article proved “prophetic” in its description of Crump’s methods and how he and the courts would treat Aubrey’s case. (3)<\/p>\n
In fact, under Crump’s directions, Aubrey’s family and these same ‘advocates’ were compelled to not discuss with the public or media new evidence of what actually happened to Aubrey. Crump directed them to keep quiet, in his efforts to use controlling that information and keeping it out of the public eye as a bargaining chip to negotiate as hefty a settlement and attorney’s fees recovery for himself as he could.<\/p>\n
Because, one of the defining functions of UPROAR is to bring public light and accountability to prison abuses, a rift actually developed between UPROAR and those advocates who agreed to play Crump’s game of hiding new evidence that came out about Aubrey’s murder and to not expose how Crump was manipulating Aubrey’s family. Had these advocates, who were close to the source, supported us in exposing these matters instead of Crump’s agenda, they would have served to further educate the public about the gross abuses in Va prisons, with an eye to ending them, and the role of opportunists like Crump and the settlement process.<\/p>\n
Crump’s own behavior in litigation, which the public doesn’t generally get to see, confirms that personal profit, and not the pretence of seeking justice or protecting the civil rights of the poor and people of color, is the actual motive behind his career of chasing ambulances and hearses containing Black bodies. In a Florida case for example, he asked the court to grant him a $1000 an hour attorney’s fee award – a ridiculously high rate, far above the already extreme rates the other attorneys on the case sought. The judge rebuked Crump stating, “As for Benjamin Crump, this court agrees that $1,000 an hour is excessive.” (4)<\/p>\n
So, while these settlements are portrayed as ‘justice’ to the survivors and victims of pig murders and abuses, they serve to cover up and protect police and guard abusers, uphold a culture of impunity, to hide the cases and evidence of these outrages from the public to whom the pigs are SUPPOSED to be accountable, and ensure that these abuses and murders will continue undeterred because the pigs know they will always escape accountability.<\/p>\n
We need to build a movement that will uncompromisingly expose and resist the murders and abuses of this system, a Stolen Lives Movement that does not answer to the dictates of civil rights hustlers like Benjamin Crump and the corrupt settlement process. A movement that will ultimately uproot this decadent capitalist imperialist system and give power to the masses.<\/p>\n
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!<\/p>\n
All Power to the People!<\/p>\n
Endnotes<\/p>\n
1. http:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=2822<\/a><\/p>\n 2. UPROAR Website: http:\/\/uproar.mayfirst.info<\/a>; on IG @uproaragainstrepression<\/p>\n