2016... the Epidemic of Police Murder and Terror Rages On

April 4, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

It’s 2016, and the epidemic of police murder and terror rages on.

In Inglewood, California—near LA—a man and a woman are murdered by police for sleeping in a car. In New York City, a postal worker is terrorized by police for being a Black man delivering mail.

How many Black people do the police have to shoot and kill with impunity...

To terrorize a whole people,

The way the Klan did in the days of the old Jim Crow?

In Winslow, Arizona, a Navajo woman is shot down on the street by police for being a Native American woman, in a land stolen by terror and genocide.

And again and again, there is a cold-blooded stamp of approval from an IN-Justice system that enforces the capitalist system. That system never has, and never will, grant those it has enslaved, exploited and oppressed even the right to step out of their houses without fear of being the next in line for a police bullet.

* * *

1) February 22, around 3 am Saturday night, 31-year-old Kisha Michael and 33-year-old Marquintan Sandlin were in a parked car in Inglewood, California. The mayor of Inglewood said they were “unconscious” when police came up on the car. Police claim they saw a gun in Kisha’s hand—whether or not that is true, both occupants were unconscious and no evidence has been presented that either person in the car fired at police. After 45 minutes—during which time authorities have not revealed anything about what happened—police murdered Kisha and Marquintan in a barrage of fire as if the U.S. Army were storming into a village in Iraq: news video shows an armored SWAT truck and police with automatic weapons; neighbors describe the area under the floodlights of police helicopters, and a lawyer representing the family of one of the victims told Revolution that machine guns were used by police.

Kisha Michael was a woman who had gone through domestic abuse, was raising three children as a single mother, and ended up dead at the hands of police. Marquintan Sandlin was a father who had battled through hard times and had begun work as a truck driver. To this system, they weren’t even human beings.

* * *

2) March 17, Glenn Grays, a Black postal worker in uniform, was delivering mail when he was nearly run over by a reckless driver of a car full of thugs. The driver and occupants of the car were NYPD officers. When Grays shouted at the driver, the cop threw the car in reverse and screamed back at the mail carrier. In a crime captured on video, the plainclothes cops got out of the car, slapped Grays in handcuffs, and assaulted him while shouting “stop resisting”—setting up a scene that could have easily turned into a police murder like with Freddie Gray in Baltimore or Eric Garner in Staten Island.

Despite outrage from bystanders, police arrested Grays, charged him with “resisting arrest,” and left his mail truck unlocked in the street. As of today, none of these state-sponsored terrorists have been arrested.

* * *

3) On March 27, Winslow, Arizona, police fired five bullets into Loreal Tsingine, killing her as she walked down the street, unarmed. They justified murdering this 27-year-old Navajo woman by claiming she shoplifted beer, and “threatened” a cop with scissors.

Police murdered Loreal Tsingine on land stolen by capitalism—backed by the U.S. Army—from the Native peoples. They murdered her in a city where people from the neighboring Navajo reservation—with over 40 percent unemployment—come in search of work or to shop. Friends described Loreal Tsingine as a beautiful person, whose life was stolen. But to this system, she is just another dead Indian in an ongoing genocide that cleared the way for everything America is all about.

* * *

4) March 30, the county attorney for Minneapolis announced no charges would be filed against police who murdered Jamar Clark—a 24-year-old Black man—on November 15, 2015. This despite the fact that many, many witnesses say police handcuffed Jamar, knocked him to the ground, and then shot him in the head.

Immediately after the murder, defiant protest erupted in Minneapolis, including an occupation of the street in front of the police station from which the killers operate. Authorities are trying to defuse ongoing protest and outrage with a federal Department of IN-Justice investigation. But on March 8, that same Department of IN-Justice announced there would be no federal civil rights charges filed against the NYPD cop that killed Ramarley Graham in his home in the Bronx, New York City, in February 2012. The IN-Justice Department ruled that the police who broke into the unarmed Ramarley Graham’s home without a warrant and murdered Ramarley in his bathroom did not “willfully deprive an individual of a constitutional right.”

Yes, there is a Black man in the White House, but it is still the case that Black people have no rights in America that this system is bound to respect, including the right not to be murdered by police.

* * *

How many more people will this system kill before this nightmare is ended? How much longer will the system bring down its daily terror against Black and Latino and Native American and other people of color? How much longer all its unjust killings, fast and slow?

For just as long as it stands.

The way to STOP it for good is to end the RULE of this system and replace it with a whole OTHER kind of rule that serves the interests of emancipating ALL of humanity. Check out the revolution that is about that, and get into Bob Avakian, who is leading that revolution, and who has brought forward a whole other way the world can be—for real. And right now stand up AGAINST those murderers.

Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution

 

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.