LA Police Shoot Unarmed 15-Year-Old Black Youth
February 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Another outrageous police shooting of an unarmed Black youth happened in Los Angeles this past week. Fifteen-year-old Jamar Nicholson was shot in the back while he and his friends were on the way to school. Jamar survived the shooting as the bullet narrowly missed his spine and remains lodged in his back.
The four youth, three Black and one Latino, were playing in an alley doing some freestyle rapping and dancing with a toy gun when the cops arrived and shot Jamar in the back. Jamar was not the one with the toy gun, and he was not the one the police were wildly shooting at from 20 feet away.
The cops spun a story that was disputed by the youth and by people in their homes close by. The cops’ story was that they came upon someone “pointing a gun at another person,” gave several commands to “drop the gun,” and then shot. Jamar told the LA Times that he was taken to the hospital handcuffed to a gurney. He and one of his friends, Jason Huerta, both said that they did not hear any commands, only the word “freeze” a second before the cops shot. A woman whose apartment overlooks the alley said she did not hear any commands before the cops started shooting and she said that these boys usually play in this alley every day as they go to school. She said, “They don’t cause any trouble. They’re just innocent kids.”
This shooting becomes even more outrageous as the cops said the reason they shot was “to save a life.” Let’s be clear on this. Cops don’t save the lives of Black and Latino youth. Cops take the lives of Black and Latino youth!
After the shooting the cops told Huerta that “it looks wrong” for Black and Latino youth to be hanging out together, and that they felt that the three Black youth were jacking up a Latino. That outlook, by itself, tells a lot about how this system and the cops that enforce it see youth like these—as nothing but garbage to be thrown away.
Articles in Los Angeles Times about this shooting are blaming this and some other cop shootings on toy guns. Let’s be clear on this, too. Toy guns do not kill Black and Latino youth; COPS KILL BLACK AND LATINO YOUTH!
How many more times is this going to happen before we put a stop to it? The time is now and the day for that is April 14 for people to stand up and be heard and “take our movement to STOP wanton police murder to a whole new level.” On that day, NO SCHOOL! NO WORK! STOP BUSINESS AS USUAL!
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