Police Execute Korryn Gaines, Wound Her 5-Year-Old Son
Another Black Woman Needlessly Murdered By Pigs
August 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Korryn Gaines.
Photo: Korryn Gaines/Facebook
What kind of a system murders people—especially Black and Brown people—over and over again in situations that could and should be resolved without shooting someone dead?
On Monday, August 1, a team of Baltimore County cops came to 23-year-old Korryn Gaines’ apartment in suburban Baltimore to serve her and her boyfriend with petty warrants. Her boyfriend fled the apartment and was arrested for an assault charge, but Korryn and her 5-year- old son Kodi remained in the apartment and refused to answer the door. Armed cops kicked it open, and a standoff began. Seven hours later heavily armed pigs murdered Korryn, the ninth Black woman killed by police this year, and wounded Kodi.
Korryn recorded chilling video on Facebook as it was happening, which was widely viewed, until the police got Facebook to shut down her Facebook and Instagram accounts in the middle of the standoff. Police have tried to justify their execution because Korryn displayed a legally registered shotgun, which they claim she threatened them with. (Relatives of Korryn dispute this.) In any case, these heavily armed pigs had illegally entered her apartment, without her permission, and she loudly and firmly told them to leave. She was sitting on the floor, with Kodi in the same room.
There were plenty of ways the pigs could have handled this incident without killing her and wounding her son! But as this system keeps making it clear over and over—when an incident involves the lives of Black and Latino people, they simply shoot to kill.
Any system which can’t handle situations like this differently is an illegitimate system, and the violence it uses to maintain its rule is utterly illegitimate as well!
There will be a vigil/remembrance for Korryn this Friday, August 5 at 7 pm, at Baltimore City College High School, 3220 The Alameda, Baltimore, Maryland.
From BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian:
Editor’s note: Tyisha Miller was a 19-year-old African-American woman shot dead by Riverside, California police in 1998. Miller had been passed out in her car, resulting from a seizure, when police claimed that she suddenly awoke and had a gun; they fired 23 times at her, hitting her at least 12 times, and murdering her. Bob Avakian addressed this.
If you can’t handle this situation differently than this, then get the fuck out of the way. Not only out of the way of this situation, but get off the earth. Get out of the way of the masses of people. Because, you know, we could have handled this situation any number of ways that would have resulted in a much better outcome. And frankly, if we had state power and we were faced with a similar situation, we would sooner have one of our own people’s police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re actually trying to be a servant of the people. You go there and you put your own life on the line, rather than just wantonly murder one of the people. Fuck all this “serve and protect” bullshit! If they were there to serve and protect, they would have found any way but the way they did it to handle this scene. They could have and would have found a solution that was much better than this. This is the way the proletariat, when it’s been in power has handled—and would again handle—this kind of thing, valuing the lives of the masses of people. As opposed to the bourgeoisie in power, where the role of their police is to terrorize the masses, including wantonly murdering them, murdering them without provocation, without necessity, because exactly the more arbitrary the terror is, the more broadly it affects the masses. And that’s one of the reasons why they like to engage in, and have as one of their main functions to engage in, wanton and arbitrary terror against the masses of people.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 2:16
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