From The Michael Slate Show:
The Police Murder of Tyler Damon Woods
January 13, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The following is a transcript of a December 13, 2013 interview on The Michael Slate Show on KPFK Pacifica radio.
“Welcome to my neck of the woods. Where we seek justice no matter how many people have their backs turned against us. We are the WOODS MOVEMENT; in dedication to the late Tyler Damon Woods who was slayed by the Long Beach Police department, On Tuesday November 19, 2013. Our mission is to capture justice and end police brutality against defenseless citizens.”
From a petition demanding justice for Tyler Damon Woods
Tyler Damon Woods
At 3 a.m. on November 19, 2013, 19-year-old Tyler Damon Woods was in a car with his friends when they were stopped by the police in Long Beach, California. Tyler ran away from the police. They chased him and when they eventually cornered him, he knelt down and turned his head to face them. The Long Beach police opened fire, savagely killing him. Tkeyah Boyd, mother of her and Tyler’s one-year-old child, has been leading a fight to spread the word about this killing, and to demand justice for Tyler Damon Woods. On December 27, 2013, Tkeyah told the story of Tyler’s murder on The Michael Slate Show.
Michael Slate: Tell us what happened to Tyler.
Tkeyah Boyd: Well, he was fleeing the police at first. They were chasing him. And he ran and he was very scared. From what the witnesses in the apartments were telling us, he was very scared. And a lot of people wanted to help him, but he was turning down their help. He didn’t want to involve anybody in what was going on. And as he was running and he was about to get on the roof, he was gunned down. The autopsy hasn’t been released, but they shot him anywhere from thirty to sixty times. So they emptied their clips, reloaded—emptied their clips, reloaded—on an unarmed man. And it’s very tragic to me because I don’t think anybody—that’s overkill. Nobody should be killed with that many shots. It’s just crazy that he was really gunned down viciously for no reason. He was surrendering; he had his hands up. He was kneeling. If anything they should have shot rubber bullets, or anything. But, you know, that’s the Long Beach Police Department. He’s the 20th killing alone this year.
Michael Slate: One of the things that they kept saying is, in the early reports on the murder—and I do think people have to be clear, this is an outright murder. When someone is kneeling down, and he’s facing away and he turns around to face them and they just open fire, like you said, with anywhere from thirty to sixty shots—what’s going on there? Anybody who’s rational has to say, what the hell is going on there. And then the first thing that they do, is they say, well, we can’t tell yet whether he had a gun. That’s what the newspapers do. And then the second thing they do is, they say, well, you know, he was wanted for this, and he had done this, and he had done that, and they really try to demonize and criminalize him, as if that would somehow justify their outright murder.
Tkeyah Boyd: Right. And that’s what I say, you know. You guys know if he had a gun or not. They searched him before he even ran from them. So they knew already before that he didn’t have a weapon on him. That’s just an excuse for why they had a reason to kill him. There’s no reason to kill him. There’s no reason. It was wrong. They need to be held accountable for what they did.
Michael Slate: Now let me repeat this. They searched him before they began to chase him?
Tkeyah Boyd: Yes. Prior to him running, he was searched, from head to toe. They knew he was unarmed. He had no weapon on him. No weapon was ever found. There was no weapon at all. They’re just trying to make that up to make it seem like there was a weapon so they had a reason to shoot him when they didn’t have no reason. They’re covering up everything. They’re trying to cover up right now.
Michael Slate: Tell us a little bit about Tyler. What was he like?
Tkeyah Boyd: Really cool. He was really funny. Never a dull moment with him. You just spend one day with him and—it was life, you know. He’s a different type of person. He wasn’t just a 19-year-old. He loved his child. That was number one. He always wanted to do for our son Nye. He wanted to make sure that he’s always taken care of. He was good. And that was what he was trying to do. He was trying to be a father. He was trying to be a man. He was growing from a boy to a man. And they didn’t give him a chance.
Yeah, he had this on his record, whatever the case is. He could have went to jail. He could have had a change, he could have turned over. You know, you never know what could have happened with him. But they didn’t think that way, you know. So we’ll never know. And now my son has to grow up without a father. He loved that baby so much. It’s crazy.
Michael Slate: It’s really important for people to understand who he was and what he was like. Because, again, like I said, one of the things they do all the time is they murder someone, the police murder someone, and then they turn around and they murder them again, a second time, by murdering their reputation, by murdering even the memories that their families have. They try to cast a pall over everything by saying this guy had a criminal record. This guy was wanted for this. And actually when you look at it—while they ran all this stuff out, they also said, oh, well, he was convicted for a burglary or something in San Bernardino. And then as they were reporting on it, they say, well, he actually got probation for that because he didn’t have any prior adult record. Even there, they’re offering a hint that he wasn’t the monster that they were trying to portray.
Tkeyah Boyd: And that’s what I think. Anything that he had on his record now, the wanted for armed robbery or suspicion for carjacking, he didn’t go to court for that. So you can’t say he did that. He didn’t get his time in court for that. So we can’t put that on him that he did that. It could have been somebody could have made a mistake. Somebody could have pointed him out and it could have been the wrong person. Who knows? But, for me, he wasn’t like that. He was very caring. He made sure that everybody around him was taken care of. That’s number one. If somebody couldn’t eat, he would help them eat. That’s what people don’t know about him. He was very caring, very loving. He’s been through a whole bunch, a whole bunch in his life. And he was just trying to be a man. He was growing. He had a child. This is his first child. This is the first experience for him. He has to learn that. And he has to be a father now. And now his son won’t even get to experience that. He won’t even get to experience a tad of what I’ve experienced of him: very loving, very great person. All the records and all that, nobody’s perfect. Everybody has a past. Everybody does wrong. But don’t judge him off of what they’re telling you about him.
Michael Slate: You folks in the movement there, you make a very important statement in the petition you have up on Change.org. People should actually go and check that petition out. You make a statement that no matter what anybody did, even if Tyler was convicted or it was proven that he’d done many, many things, committed many crimes, or whatever—nothing justifies being shot and killed while kneeling down and having done nothing at all.
Tkeyah Boyd: Correct. That is exactly the point of our whole movement. The petition will tell you the whole story and what we’re trying to do as far as the petition, getting the petition up to the city council instead of police department. Because we want these officers convicted like as if they were us. These are people who are killing people. This is the 20th shooting alone this year. That’s crazy. And then these cops are still out there. They’re killing people. And I don’t want there to be another Tyler Woods. I don’t want anybody to feel what I feel. I don’t want anybody to feel the pain that I feel, or a son to have to go through what my son will have to go through. I need it to end. You know, it won’t end. I’m not saying that it will end. But I want it to be a change.
And the more people who stand up, and the more people who are becoming a voice for the people who have been killed by these policemen, the more chance we have of getting these men prosecuted. They’re regular people just like us. Without that badge, they’re just a person.
Michael Slate: You make that point in the Change.org petition, you actually make that point where you say, “The officers involved in these killing sprees and heinous acts of violence should be convicted, tried, and sentenced for their involvement in such matters. Officers should permanently be removed from patrol and their badges should be revoked. Officers should face the same criminal charges, and punishments as civilians! Just because they have a badge doesn’t make killing justifiable, in fact they are trained to kill so that should be held against them.” That’s a pretty heavy statement.
Tkeyah Boyd: Yes. And see, they’re cops, so people believe their words. They’re just automatically right, when they’re just a person just like us. They’re trained. They know what they’re supposed to do. They know how to take people down. Killing shouldn’t be their first option. It shouldn’t even be an option. There’s fifty ways I know they know how to take somebody down without killing them. And they’ automatically just shooting people. There’s no reason. We’re talking about an unarmed surrendering man. No Chance. We have more than twenty cops there. And then we have cops shooting. Who knows how many cops were shooting? And they’re just trying to cover up and make it seem like he was just that much—they were scared. You’re scared? I’m scared. I’m a civilian. I’m scared. You’re telling them you’re scared? I’m scared. I’m supposed to call you for help.
Michael Slate: When you mention the number of cops that were there, actually one of the residents of the area said that she was woken up and she saw several police cars speeding up and down the street. When she looked out the window there were helicopters. She then said they were coming in hordes, to chase one young man, they were coming in hordes.
Tkeyah Boyd: We’re talking about one man, with no gun, who’s running, who’s terrified. Any of the witnesses could tell you he was scared.
Michael Slate: Yeah, exactly. Now, one of the things you also bring out, and it was very important to me, because you’ve started a movement that is really aimed at getting justice for Tyler. Tell us a little bit about that movement., because again, it says very clearly, “Our mission is to capture justice and end police brutality against defenseless citizens.” And there’s a number of times you point out in different things that I’ve read that the role of the police in killing Black people in a certain sense, is part of the whole conditions of life that Black people are forced to live under, which actually is part of an entire genocide.
Tkeyah Boyd: Right. And our movement, Justice For Tyler, we want his story to get heard. It happened. People sweep it under the rug, or it happened, he was killed and, you know, sorry to him. But we’re trying to be the voice for him. He can’t talk any more. So now we’re going to be the voice. We do marches. Almost every weekend I have a march, I have a march going. We just got out of a Kwanzaa parade so we were in that, and that went really well.
Our movement is really to get his story out. We pass out fliers, we get people to sign the petition wherever we are. If we’re just walking in the mall, we passing out fliers. I have a great support system behind me that really helps me get this movement out. And if it’s just ten of us out there marching, at least we’re getting heard. And as I march, I pick up more stories. I pick up more people who’ve been involved in stuff like this, and that groups us as one. Their stories are dying down. We want to bring those back up. We want justice for everybody. Justice for Tyler. Justice for anybody who’s been killed by the police department, period. That is our whole movement. Because we work better as one, than as separate little stories.
Michael Slate: There’s a point where you say that, again, you emphasize this wanting justice and you emphasize this thing about the nature of the police. You say, they’re “murderers—they are PAID career criminals in uniforms, being valued by their unit for minimizing the population, by killing us off one by one. We as a whole will fight for Tyler. We will not let his story go unheard!” And I thought it was worth mentioning that one of the people that came up on this was a fairly influential person, the hip hop artist “The Game”. I thought that was a very important thing to happen, because he turned around and he said, “Look, there were no questions about it.” He compared what happened to Tyler to what happened to Trayvon Martin.
Tkeyah Boyd: Yes. And it’s crazy because we’re talking about young men who don’t have any protection on them. They’re just minding their business. They’re stopped by these men and they’re gunned down, over the fact that you’re scared of me. But we’re talking about people of higher power with the police. Trayvon, he was gunned down by an older man. He was scared of this young man. How are you scared? If you’re that scared, you have to kill him? I get scared all the time. You don’t see me shooting people. It’s crazy. That’s what I think about the police. You guys are for our protection. You guys are supposed to be our protectors, not to kill us. And you’re laying us down like it’s nothing. And it’s crazy that they do that.
And they think it’s OK. They wake up the next morning and it’s like nothing ever happened, because they go out and they kill another person. And they sleep at home with their kids and they’re with their families. And they’re not knowing that other people are hurt. They don’t know how much pain we feel. They don’t know what we go through. But let it happen to a cop that got killed. Then it’s all this crazy madness. They’re prosecuting the person to the max, to the fullest.
We can’t even get a little justice as people? We’re that much not looked at? We’re that much below you guys that we don’t deserve the same justice that you would give if it was one of your own?
Michael Slate: Very well put, Tkeyah, and we’re going to have to wrap this up. But I wanted to let people know if they want to get involved with this, if they’re interested in finding out how to get involved, they can do it through Twitter. The hashtag is #JusticeForTyler.
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