The Cold-Blooded Murder of Ricardo Diaz Zeferino by the Gardena Police
July 20, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
Ricardo Diaz Zeferino stands on the sidewalk between his two friends with his hands up on a street in Gardena, a city outside of L.A. Two cops stand about 20 feet to the side with their guns pointed at the three men. He takes off his cap and lowers his arms. His empty right palm is out, facing upward. He starts to raise his arms back over his head. A volley of shots rings out. Ricardo falls to the ground. He is dead—murdered by the Gardena police.
The video of Ricardo being gunned down in cold blood by these Gardena pigs was just recently released by a judge, a little over two years after Ricardo, who was 34 years old, was murdered on June 2, 2013.
The video also shows Eutiquio Acevedo Mendez, who has his hands over his heads and is standing next to Ricardo, also being shot by these pigs. Eutiquio was wounded, and still has bullet fragments near his spine.
For two years, we’ve been told by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office (Gardena is a city in Los Angeles County) that this was a justifiable killing. The cops stopped the two men who had a bicycle that they believed had been stolen. Ricardo ran up and said that the bicycle belonged to his brother and that he had done nothing wrong.
The cops fabricated a story that Ricardo had taken something out of his left rear pocket and that they could not see his right hand, “fearing he had a weapon in it.” But this video has exposed these cops for the murderers and liars they are.
The city and the cops have been fighting for two years to keep this video from being released. However, the city recently agreed to settle a lawsuit for $4.7 million in the killing of Ricardo and wounding Eutiquio Acevedo, and since those funds were taken from public money, the judge ruled that the public had the right to see the video.
The $4.7 million lawsuit settlement is not justice for Ricardo. The murdering pigs are still out on the street. These killer cops must be indicted, convicted, and put behind bars. That is the justice we are demanding.
The release of this video has created a storm of anger. The LA Times on July 18 ran a front page article about this killing with the tag line “Release of Videos Showing Gardena Officers Shooting an unarmed man fuels a national debate…over the use of lethal force by law enforcement.” The video of this murder continues to shine the light on the hundreds of police killings happening every year, and when we see the few videos that have been released of police murders around the country—Eric Garner in New York, Walter Scott in South Carolina, Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, Washington, and now this one of Ricardo Diaz Zeferino—you should come to grips with the reality that the cops in this country are murdering people at a most alarming rate. This has got to stop!
A local television station’s newscast showed the video to Ricardo’s brother, Augustin de Jesús Reynoso, who later said he does not trust the police anymore. As he watched the video of his brother being gunned down, tears ran down Augustin’s face.
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