In One Week:
Murdering Police Go Free All Over the USA
MURDER AND ABUSE BY POLICE MUST STOP
Updated May 26, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In a single week, in Grapevine, Texas; in St. Louis, Missouri; and now in Cleveland, Ohio, the system let murdering police go free. In that same week, the Supreme Court ruled in a case of a woman in San Francisco that cops cannot be sued for shooting at severely mentally disabled people who allegedly "threaten violence." And in the same week, the President of the United States gave a pat on the back to one of the most fascist police forces in the country. THIS MUST STOP!*
On the night of November 29, 2012, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, a Black man and woman, were driving in downtown Cleveland when the police began chasing them, joined by the highway patrol, sheriffs and two other communities' cops. After a 25-minute chase, the two ended up trapped in a cul-de-sac in East Cleveland, a poor, mainly Black community. As the car was stopped, 13 Cleveland pigs shot 137 bullets into the car, 23 bullets hitting Russell and 24 bullets hitting Williams. The police claim they heard a gunshot coming from the car Timothy Russell was driving, but no gun or shells have been found in the car or along the route of the chase.
On May 23rd, a judge acquitted the only policeman charged with a serious crime in this horrific murder of all charges because he said he could not determine which of the pigs fired the fatal shots.
On February 20, Ruben Garcia Villalpando was pulled over by a cop in Grapevine, Texas. Fernando Romero described what's recorded on the pigs' video camera: “My brother-in-law is out of the car with his hands up, and the first thing he asks is, 'are you going to kill me?'” The pig first cursed at Ruben, then shot him twice in the chest at close range, murdering him.
On May 18th, a Tarrant County Grand Jury no-billed Robert Clark, the pig who gunned down Ruben Villalpando in cold blood.
On October 8th in St. Louis, 18 year old Vonderrit Myers was murdered by a St. Louis pig who claimed he was acting in self defense. Vonderrit was with several friends and, as his aunt Jackie Williams said, “My nephew was coming out of a store from purchasing a sandwich… I don’t know how this happened, but they went off and shot him 16 times. That’s outright murder.”
On May 18th, a St. Louis County attorney announced that no charges would be filed against murdering pig Jason Flannery.
In August 2008, San Francisco police barged into the room of a group home where Teresa Sheehan lived; their “job was to transport her safely to a mental health facility”. The cops claimed Sheehan had a knife, and shot her six times, severely disabling her. (See “The REAL Record of the Holder Department of IN-Justice: Supporting Police Violence in EVERY CASE Before the Supreme Court.”)
On May 18th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cops cannot be sued for shooting at severely mentally disabled people who allegedly “threaten violence”.
Also on May 18th: Barack Obama traveled to Camden New Jersey – an impoverished city notorious for its brutal police and relentless oppression of Black people. He held up the police there as a “symbol of promise” to the rest of the country, and vowed to help bring methods used in Camden – methods that have brought a huge increase in arrests for low level “offenses” like not having lights on a bicycle. Arrests have reached their highest level in years in Camden, and at least a dozen people have filed claims of “excessive force” against the police.
There is an epidemic of police brutality and murder. Murdering police are almost never arrested. When they are they are usually let go. A recent Washington Post analysis revealed: "Among the thousands of fatal shootings at the hands of police since 2005, only 54 officers have been charged ... [and] most were cleared or acquitted in the cases that have been resolved." ("Thousands Dead, Few Prosecuted," April 11, 2015).
And this is not going to change without even more massive, more defiant and more widespread struggle. And we NEED a revolution, we need to get organized for an ACTUAL revolution. What the masses who rose up in Baltimore did has increased the possibility of that... and increased the challenges that revolutionaries must recognize and meet to actually move closer to being able to make that revolution.
This SYSTEM cannot do away with MURDER BY POLICE
But REVOLUTION can do away with this SYSTEM
* An earlier version of this article incorrectly made it appear that in all five of these instances, the system let police who murdered people go free. That was the case in three of these instances, and the same agenda of promoting police violence against people was at the heart of the other two examples, but we apologize for the error on a serious issue. [back]
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