Jordan Edwards: 15 Years Old and Black— Murdered by Police for Riding in a Car
May 4, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Editors’ note: This article was posted before the fired cop, Roy Oliver, was charged with murder for the killing of Jordan Edwards and arrested on May 5. This is one of the very rare instances where a killer cop is actually charged with a crime—now the demand is that Oliver must be convicted and sent to jail. And this one arrest does not change the reality that this is a totally illegitimate system whose armed enforcers carry out murder after murder of Black, Brown, and other oppressed people.
Jordan Edwards had gone to a high school party with his brother at a friend’s house on a Saturday night (April 29) in Balch Springs, a small suburb outside Dallas, Texas.
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
Edwards was 15 years old and Black. He was a good student and on the freshman football team, a wiry, bright-eyed kid whose smile, a friend said, “could light up a room.” It was the kind of high school night you’d be excited about—meeting classmates, hanging out, having a good time—a night that should have been one of the joys of being young and alive, with hopes and dreams.
But then, in an instant, Jordan was dead, his head blown apart by a cop’s rifle shot.
It was late, maybe 3 a.m., and someone called the cops complaining of kids drinking. Two cops arrived and went inside. Shots were reportedly fired outside. People came outside, some trying to quickly leave, including Jordan, his 16-year-old brother, and three friends. They got in their car and started to drive away. Then cop Roy Oliver, who’d also come outside, picked up a rifle and fired several shots into the car. Jordan was hit in the face, murdered right in front of his brother and his friends.
When is wanton, goddamn murder by police going to end! How many more unarmed Black youths, beautiful human beings entering the primes of their lives, are going to be gunned down by police for no other conceivable reason than they’re Black?!
And then the cops tried to do what they always do: cover up and justify their murder. The Balch Springs Police Department quickly issued this statement: “There was an unknown altercation with the vehicle backing down the road towards the officers in an aggressive manner. An officer shot at the vehicle, striking a front seat passenger. The individual was transported to the hospital where he was pronounced deceased.” In other words, they were claiming that the cop feared for his life while doing his job, and so the killing was legitimate.
This probably would have gotten over, except that the whole incident was videotaped. The cops on the scene had blatantly lied: the car Jordan was in was going forward, AWAY from the party and away from the cops. And now that those cops have been caught in their lies, the chief of police is claiming that he was “unintentionally incorrect” in his initial statement.
The chief of police claims the actions of the officer who killed Jordan Edwards “did not meet our core values.” Didn’t meet your “core values”? Yes, they did. That’s why you jumped to broadcast their lies before the facts were in. That’s why, according to the best friend of Jordan’s father, “The police never came to the hospital.” And that’s why cops kill hundreds of people every year, all across the country—and always claim “justifiable homicide.” Their job is to protect the system and enforce the oppressive status quo. This is what their “law and order”—with all its brutality and murder—is about. And this is why time after time after time, cops who kill almost NEVER face even a slap on the wrist. Only a day after Jordan’s killing, the system let the two white cops who killed Alton B. Sterling in Baton Rouge walk free.
Roy Oliver was fired, but Jordan’s family is demanding “Justice for Jordan.” They want the killer cop arrested and charged.
Black people have been brutalized, terrorized, and murdered since this country was founded—through slavery, through Jim Crow, right up to today and the “New Jim Crow.” What kind of a system murders countless thousands of Black and Brown youths, for anything, or for nothing, decade after decade after decade? What kind of system then brings forward a fascist like Trump, who then selects as his attorney general a straight-up KKK racist like Jeff Sessions, who says the pigs have faced too much scrutiny and should now be unleashed to carry out even more police terror and murder?
What kind of a system? A completely illegitimate system that needs to be overthrown by revolution at the soonest possible moment!
Indict, Convict, Send Those Killer Cops to Jail.
The Whole Damn System is Guilty as Hell!
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