Vallejo Police Firing Squad That Executed Willie McCoy Is Back on the Job
And What IS Their Job?!

From the Revolution Club, SF Bay Area

| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On February 28, civil rights attorney John Burris called a press conference in Vallejo, California—the Bay Area city with the highest per capita rate of murder by police—with victims of police brutality and family members of people whose lives were stolen by the Vallejo Police Department (VPD). Dozens of people showed up with signs and pictures of their loved ones who were killed by the police. Burris announced a claim against the City of Vallejo which said, in part: “The six person firing squad shot Mr. McCoy approximately 25 times. The officers’ bullets struck Mr. McCoy in the head, ear, neck, chest, arms, shoulders, hands, and back. The entire operation was bungled from start to finish....”1

Vicious. Cold-blooded. But bungled? No. It was the police doing their job. Hunting down and terrorizing Black and Brown youth. Yes, from a human perspective, of how to deal with a young man who is passed out in his car in the Taco Bell drive-through, there is absolutely NO reason Willie McCoy should be dead. But from a pig perspective—from the perspective of the system that these pigs enforce, a system that has no jobs and no future for people like Willie and views them as just a bug to be squashed, as someone put it at the press conference—it was business as usual: a two-week paid vacation for the six cops, and then cleared to go back to work!

One of the six pigs, Ryan McMahon, also murdered unarmed 32-year-old Ronnell Foster just last year, stopping him supposedly for “riding a bicycle in an unsafe manner,” tasing him, beating him, and then shooting him in the back when he tried to get away. At the press conference, Burris put it like this:

Something is rotten within the Vallejo Police Department. There is a sense that within this department itself, there is a lack of appreciation, a lack of concern, a lack of caring, for life, or the physical well being of the African-American community. There are many cases where people have been stopped wrongfully, they’ve been arrested wrongfully, they’ve been stopped while taking videos, all of which is wrong. The department acts as if it’s an occupying force, a military occupying force in this community, and we’re not going to stand for it anymore.

John Burris’ office itself has been involved in over 14 cases against the VPD in the last seven years, and said he’s aware of at least 30 more cases of VPD brutality in recent years. Some of the incidents have been caught on video, like the VPD beating of unarmed 23-year-old Dejuan Hall in 2017. And the bloody beating of a Latino man last year. And the viral video that Adrian Burrell took in January of Vallejo pig David McLaughlin pulling a gun on his cousin and then brutalizing him for filming it from his own front porch! Same pig McLaughlin who, in 2017, chased Jeffrey Barboa into Richmond, rammed his car and shot him 41 times. And we can go on and on. In 2012, VPD pig Sean Kenney killed three people in five months, and was given a promotion. In August 2015, Jimmy Brooks’ mother called police saying that her son was suicidal. Police beat him, breaking both his legs and his foot. In April 2016, Nickolas Pitts was at his apartment taking out the trash when the VPD pulled up and held him at gunpoint before beating and arresting him. In January 2017, two Vallejo pigs tased Joe Ledesma’s dog in his home, and when Joe protested they tased him and then beat him, breaking both his arms. In the same month, three VPD pigs pulled Jason Anderson over while at work delivering car parts, tased him multiple times, beat and kicked him. Also in January 2017, Vallejo police showed up at a party where a fight was happening and they shot 21-year-old Angel Ramos to death in his own home. Police claimed he had a knife and was stabbing someone, but the “stabbing victim” didn’t have any knife wounds and said that they were just fist-fighting and there was no knife. The DA refused to press charges and called it a “justifiable homicide”!

All the sadness and anger about this poured out at the press conference when people spoke out, with many demanding justice not only for their loved ones, but for all victims of police terror. It was striking that, in this small city of 118,000, a number of people were connected to more than one victim of police murder, and many had themselves been brutalized by the police.

 

 

After the press conference, Burris’ legal team led a short but angry march, with people chanting “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Six cops 26 shots!”

When the march returned to the plaza in front of City Hall, several young women got in front of media cameras demanding to be heard. “This was a lynching.” “This has got to stop.” A member of the Revolution Club started agitating to the crowd about how America was NEVER great and why this system can’t be reformed, but must be overthrown. He read Bob Avakian’s quote from BAsics about how “The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people.” And he challenged people that to really make this stop we need an actual revolution. We got out the statement from the Revolution Club throughout the crowd.

Watch this video from a young woman in Vallejo and then ask yourself HOW LONG MUST THIS GO ON? How many more will they murder before we wake up and get organized for a real revolution?

No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.

—Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:13

1. Willie McCoy, a 20-year-old Black man, was murdered by police on February 9 as he was sleeping or passed out in his car.  [back]

Willie McCoy

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