This post is dedicated to Anita Gay, Gary King Jr., all of their families and friends, and all of the countless other victims of police killings and brutality that go unnoticed, unannounced, and are given some form of justification by racist police departments across the country.
Gary King Jr. was wrongfully shot and killed by the notoriously corrupt Oakland Police Department on September 20, 2007. Immediately action was taken by his family, friends, and concerned community members to fight for justice in this case of fatal police brutality.
Gary King Jr. was 20 years old when he was killed by Sgt. Pat Gonzalez of the Oakland Police Department. A myspace page with a brief profile has since been set up in his memory. Also the city of Oakland allowed family and friends to erect a mural on the pillars of the BART tracks at the place he was slain.
The incidents around King’s murder remain extremely suspect. Police claimed he was reaching for a weapon as he ran away, but witnesses (even “neutral” witnesses) say that he was pulling his pants up as he ran. He was suspected of being a suspect, and ultimately killed for being a young black male in the vicinity of a police officer who was willing to shoot and kill King in the back as he ran away from being accused of a murder that he did not commit and was not even a suspect in! According to an article written by George Ciccariello-Maher:
…Gary King and a group of friends were walking out of East Bay Liquors. A patrol officer, Sgt. Pat Gonzales, was headed southbound on the other side of MLK, near the 55th Street light. The officer claims to have identified King as a potential suspect in a murder that had occurred nearby a month prior – note here the words “potential” and “suspect.”
For anyone who knows the geography of the incident, this “identification” was quite a feat: A full block away, looking diagonally across six lanes and between the thick pillars supporting the BART tracks, Gonzales was allegedly capable of identifying King.
The officer crossed under the tracks, tires squealing, to confront the group of teens in front of the liquor store. According to witnesses, Gonzales grabbed King by his dreads, while it remains unclear if the officer was attempting to carry out an arrest. After King pulled away from Gonzales, the officer used his Taser to try to incapacitate this “potential suspect.”
You should read this article (again, if you’ve already read it).
Anita Gay –(I could not find a picture of her)– was killed 11 days ago by officer Rashawn Cummings of the Berkeley Police Department. Gay, a 51-year old mother and grandmother. Witnesses to this shooting were not allowed to get help for Gay after she was shot by police and lay bleeding on her porch. Witnesses also dispute the police’s report of her being a danger to her daughters.
http://www.nbc11.com/news/15332459/detail.html
It is terribly disturbing that in damn near every case where police officers murder people, the media is quick to justify it through somehow placing a weapon on the victim. It is just as disturbing that so many people are quick to believe these stories that are often so far fabricated and one-sided (MOST OFTEN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT’S SIDE) that they choose not to even interview witnesses with disputing accounts of what happened. Even when they do they tell the public the story from the perspective of the police who OF COURSE are going to say that it was justified. Why would they do the right thing and claim that they have officers who patrol our streets and murder people for no good reasons.
I hope that we all recall Sean Bell, and his story of being murdered by undercover police November 25, 2006 in Queens New York at the age of 23, hours before he was to be married. He was shot and killed as 50 bullets were fired in he and his friends direction. Two of his friends were seriously wounded. Luckily for them the shots were not fatal. Sean Bell was not this lucky.
Sean Bell’s father testified this morning about the final night he spent with his son.
These murders committed by police of black people across the country have all somehow been justified. But all of these cases, plus all of the cases that do not receive national or even local attention continue to represent unprovoked violence to the point of being fatal upon black bodies across the nation. These racist, ignorant, and rash tactics take lives that could have been spared, and continue to remind us as black people that we are ALWAYS under the constant threat of fatal violence especially by those who they try to convince us are here to “protect and serve.” That’s all bullshit to me. I don’t trust police, and I never will trust police.
These killings also demonstrate something that far too many people do not understand and that is that the race of the officer who shoots and kills these victims is irrelevant in terms of the racism involved. Let me make that make sense. A black or latino officer that kills another black person is committing a racist crime. While the officer may not be outwardly racist or even believe himself to have made an incredibly rash decision based on race, we live in a country that teaches us to fear black and brown bodies, and this teaching is embedded into ALL OF US despite the color of our skin. These killings illuminate how our fears of dark bodies and our subconscious racism becomes externalized in the most disturbing and fatalistic ways.
These murders HAVE NOT remain unnoticed. Much activism and progressive media has gone into fighting for the rights of Sean Bell and Gary King Jr., and others.
March for Justice in the Murder of Gary King Jr. and in solidarity with the Jena 6.
Michael Moore on police brutality, racism, and the murder of Amadou Diallo. (Moore turns it into satirical humor, which none of what i just wrote is like, but he makes some good points in it. It seems like white folks need to be spoonfed shit in a humorous way or else they ain’t tryin to hear it, ex. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert).
Democracy Now! on the Murder of Sean Bell.
Peace,
G-Mitch
February 26, 2008 at 7:34 pm |
welcome to the terrordome…
this is a great post. police brutality is so rampant in communities of color and seems to go unchecked no matter where it occurrs in the U.S. It makes me wonder what kinda dude becomes an officer of the law. Im willing to bet good money, that 6-8 times outta ten, its some goofy kid who used to get his lunch money took everyday and chose the profession to exact “revenge” on people he deemed inherently “evil.” People with low self-esteem who want to have power over someone, people who want to wield firearms all the time, or working-class folks who simply had nothing else to do and felt this was their best option throw that badge on and call it a day.
I personally believe anyone who thinks that they are serving justice by becoming someone who polices communities where people don’t own their own property, are by and large amerikan terrorists. The motto is “to protect and serve…THE WEALTH OF THE PEOPLE” (I just learned that). If you rent the place you live and dont own that property, the Police dept. has little to no worries about you or your safety in general. The police are paid by our tax dollars to protect people’s properties, wealth and investments. If a person doesnt personally own anything, they are seen as someone who would take (break the “law”) the forementioned property/wealth from its “rightful” owners. Capitalsim is crazy if you think about it, because if you “trespass” on a piece of earth that is deemed someone’s “property,” they can legally shoot and kill you and face little to zero punishment! =(
When i think about it, I can’t recall a single solitary moment when the police ever made me feel safer or more secure when they were around. I primarly feel filled with fear and terror when a person who carries a gun (and won’t suffer any consequences if they use it on me) is around…but that’s just me. =T
you are SPOT ON about Michael Moore, Colbert & Stewart in regards to the Anglo bretheren tho. LOL. Spoon-feedin ‘em! Sheesh. =P
PEACE + BLESSINGS G.
C
February 26, 2008 at 7:43 pm |
Right on brothaman.
G
February 29, 2008 at 4:30 pm |
[...] My boy Greg’s been doing a great job of covering some recent shootings at the hands of cops in… It just makes me think that the non-lethal means that cops have at their disposal are saved for White folks, while people of color get bullets. [...]
April 1, 2008 at 11:52 pm |
I LOVED THE VIDEO IT IS SO TRUE POLICEMEN ARE BEATING UP PEOPLE OF COLOR ALL AROUND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THANKS FOR MAKING IT
April 5, 2008 at 9:15 pm |
Police brutality happens to people of all color.
It’s very unfortunate what has happened to these three and many, many other victims of these senseless tragedies, but we need to as a country come together and fight police brutality as a whole, and not just fight it for black people or mexican people, etc.
We need to look past race and see the injustice that is the police departments all over the US.
April 9, 2008 at 3:24 pm |
That’s true Ally that it happens to all kinds of people, but it happens a LOT more to black people. Let’s not water that horrible truth down into some “we’re all the same, can’t we all just get along” thing. Racism lives, and it’s especially brutal among police and throughout the judicial system.
January 9, 2009 at 1:56 am |
[...] Grant III. Anita Gay. Gary King Jr. These are the names that I know of, I know there are more. They must’ve not been in broad [...]
January 17, 2009 at 2:19 am |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CwRxsfR2z4
I put together this video at the January 14th rally and march for Oscar Grant III.
January 27, 2009 at 7:31 am |
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! – - A MARCH OF STOLEN LIVES!
2009—a year in which we’re promised “change we can believe in.” But as the year is ushered in, everything is much too much the same.
2009 was barely 2 hours old when 22 year old Oscar Grant was executed with a shot to his back. While fully complying with BART Transit police, with one officer kneeling on Oscar’s neck, another stood over him, unholstered and aimed his gun and fired point blank. This cold-blooded murder was witnessed by dozens of onlookers, and captured on video and seen all over the country.
An hour later and halfway across the country, Adolph Grimes, also 22, died in a hail of 48 bullets, 12 in his back, by New Orleans police. He was sitting in his car in front of his Grandmother’s house.
On New Year’s Eve, Robbie Tolan, a promising professional baseball player, was shot in the chest, after protesting his mother being thrown against the wall of her home by police in Bellaire, a suburb of Houston. His baseball dreams are over.
Three young Black men shot, 2 dead, in 24 hours. How many others were shot, tasered or beaten to death by police in this same period, murders that did not make it into the news? The Stolen Lives Project of the Oct 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality has documented over 2000 people killed by police and La Migra in the 1990’s alone. And these are only the cases the Coalition was able to uncover thru its own efforts! There is a nationwide epidemic of police brutality and murder being unleashed upon our people by the whole system that rules over us. In the time that we are told the society is now “post racial” – these killings are overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, against young people of color. And the numbers of stolen lives are on the rise.
Most killer cops are never charged for their criminal acts, even when their victims were unarmed and doing nothing wrong. In the few cases when cops who kill people are prosecuted, they are almost
always let off by the courts.
Like the New York cops who fired 50 shots, killing Sean Bell, on his wedding night. ACQUITTED! The 41 bullets fired into unarmed Amadou Diallo by other New York cops. Again AQUITTED! And the Riverside sheriffs who fired 51 bullets into Tyisha Miller, killing her while she was unconscious in her parked car. NEVER CHARGED ! Or another Bart police officer, who in 1992, fired a shotgun into the back of the head of 19 year old, and unarmed, Jerrold Hall. NEVER CHARGED !
The cop who murdered Oscar Grant was only finally arrested and charged with murder after righteous and long suffering anger and injury at the hands of police, burst through the levee of patience and suffering silence.
WE SAY ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !!!!
WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT BRUTALITY AND MURDER BY POLICE. WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. WE REFUSE TO LET OUR YOUTH TO BE TREATED AS LESS THAN ANIMALS. THIS IS 2009, NOT THE TIME OF SLAVERY, OR OF THE KKK NIGHTRIDERS. TIMES SHOULD BE LONG PAST WHEN POLICE CAN COME INTO OUR NEIGHBORHOODS TO MURDER, ABUSE OR TERRORIZE OUR PEOPLE AND GET AWAY WITH IT.
EVERYONE WHO IS FED UP WITH THIS MURDER AND BRUTALITY, JOIN WITH US IN A MARCH OF STOLEN LIVES IN OAKLAND TO SAY BOLDLY AND LOUDLY!!!!!!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ! THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY !
END POLICE MURDER NOW ! JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT
CONVICT THE MURDERING COP AND ALL HIS ACCOMPLICES!
THE PEOPLES’ ANGER IS JUSTIFIED! DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS !
October 7, 2009 at 9:15 pm |
Gary KIng one of my best friends, we went to high schol at Oakland Tech, it kills me to know that Gary AkA Bibby is gone, HE Will be Missed and it’s even more hurtful knowing that his lil brother jeremiah is missing his older brother… R>I>P BiBBy
October 8, 2009 at 4:53 am |
First off, I have photos of Anita Gay, Andrew Moppin, Jody Mack Woodfox (Andrew and Jody were both shot in the back by the same OPD cop, 7 months apart) Let me know how to get them to you.
Also, could you publish the call and info about the Bay Area October 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation At Oakland City hall at 12 noon on the 22nd. I can send you more info if you give me a way.
thanks, d’andre
oct22BayArea@gmail.com