LAPD Cops Gun Down Man On Hollywood Boulevard
December 6, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
About 7 pm on Friday evening LAPD cops rushed to the intersection of Hollywood and Highland—where protests against police brutality and murder have been taking place night after night—and quickly opened fire at a man they allege was holding a knife. He died a short time later. The police claim they were responding to a report of an assault with a deadly weapon. A chilling photo of the man lying bloody in the street with cops still aiming their weapons at him went all over social media. The police claim a Swiss Army Knife was found at the scene.
However this story was almost immediately challenged by accounts of witnesses to the shooting. One person wrote—"Police just shot a man in the head 10 times for no reason right in front of me—holy fuck." And according to NBC Los Angeles, a woman said a man ran into a MacDonald's shouting that police shot his friend, who sometimes "liked to wave a knife to scare tourists."
Members of the Revolution Club and others, still in the streets protesting the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and Staten Island, got word of the police killing and went right to the intersection. They held up the centerfold poster in the new issue of Revolution newspaper—"Ferguson is Everywhere; Police Brutality and Murder MUST STOP!"—told people the police had just killed someone and called on them to rally and get the paper. A group of youth came up and got the newspaper, chanting "fuck the police." Someone driving by stopped and joined the protest because of the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner; and then had his car towed away by the police. Tourists there from other countries joined in and talked about what they would tell people about the police in the U.S. when they returned home.
At least three people who live on the streets told the Revolution Club that they knew the man the police killed, that he wasn't threatening anyone, and the police had no reason to shoot him. This is a corner where "impersonators" of famous movie characters hang out, making money by having their pictures taken with tourists. They said their friend was imitating a character from the movie Scream. For this he was shot to death by the police without a second thought.
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