Angry Crowd Protests When Cleveland Police Shoot at Fleeing Black Man

June 15, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From readers in Cleveland

On Sunday morning, June 14, a 22-year-old Black man was injured when police fired at least four shots at him in a poor, diverse area of Cleveland’s Westside near where police murdered 12-year-old Tamir Rice seven months ago.

The man has not yet been identified, but police say he was running from them when they opened fire in a densely populated area near a city park where young kids play and swim. Police admit firing four shots, but people in the neighborhood say they heard many more. Police say he cut himself and none of their shots hit him but many who gathered on the scene immediately said they do not believe what the police say about much of anything  especially when it comes to Black people. The man was taken to the hospital when police captured him.

Quickly, an angry crowd of about 90 people, mostly Black people from the neighborhood, poured out into the street. People were feeling the outrage and pain of the killing of Tamir Rice, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, Brandon Jones, Tanisha Anderson and other victims of police murder in Cleveland, as well as the recent not guilty verdict on cop Brelo in the savage murder of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

A consent decree for Cleveland police was signed by a judge on Friday that the powers-that-be claimed was supposed to change things. But police continue to blast away at people. People yelled out, “They kill us, they kill us! Let us live, Let us live!”  For hours people expressed outrage, demanding of the police: “Get out of our community.” And “Leave us alone!”

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams showed up to try to chill people out. He had the gall to claim people were angry for no reason: “We're in an environment where people try to find a reason to be upset." And he tried to act like we are all friends who need to work together. People in the crowd responded, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, the police.” The more he talked, the angrier people got, including yelling “137 shots is why we call you pigs” (referring to the 137 shots cops fired at Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams) and calling him and other Black cops  “house niggers.”

At one point the police tried to push the people away by extending the yellow crime-scene tape around the scene.  That only made people angrier, and the tape was broken.  People grabbed stickers calling for indictment of police for the murder of Tamir Rice, and got them out to others, as well as Carl Dix’s statement on the acquittal of cop Brelo: "137 Shots—The Whole Damned System Is Guilty! Cleveland Judge Lets Cops Involved in the Killing of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams Walk!" One man who got the Carl Dix statement read the whole message to the crowd. For several hours, anger and outrage poured out, with many people getting on the bullhorn and speaking about the constant abuse by police and about relatives who were killed.

Police—who storm through the communities like an occupying army of murderers—appointed themselves as advisors to the crowd on what kind of leadership people need to STOP police murder, and told people that revcom.us is using them. But people insisted on holding up the big Stolen Lives posters and engaging with us revolutionary communists about why Black people are treated this way, for so long.

We told people to go to revcom.us to check out the film of the dialogue between Bob Avakian and Cornel West: REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, and articles about the cause of and solution to the horrors of the system, including the oppression of Black people and how to stop it once and for all through revolution. When it started to rain, we huddled in a bus shelter, and people were asking what actions were going on for them to fight police murder here, that they want to act. We told them to come out with us on Tuesday to protest outside the NBA finals game in Cleveland.

The outpouring that went on for hours today comes from months and years of brutal and often deadly confrontations Black people have had with the police here and around the country. From talking to people, there was a sense that the white supremacy that they face is so hard and horrible, almost unbearable, but that they want to fight it and are open to a revolutionary solution.

 

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