Another Innocent Black Man Killed by Pigs:

Alabama Police Murder of Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr.

December 3, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

November 22, Thanksgiving night. An altercation broke out in Hoover’s Riverchase Galleria—a shopping mall near Birmingham, Alabama. An 18-year-old man and a young girl were hit by gunfire. As frightened shoppers ran from the scene, a cop working security at the mall confronted Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., a 21-year-old Black man, and shot him dead.

The police immediately announced they had killed the gunman, saying, “They heard the gunfire, they engaged the subject, and they took out the threat.” They claimed Bradford had “brandished” a gun. But the next day, they changed their story, saying Bradford was not the shooter and that “there is at least one gunman still at-large.” And a couple of days later, they “clarified” their use of the word “brandished,” saying they had used the term because Bradford “was holding a gun”—in another words, he was not threatening anyone with the weapon.

When EJ was killed, a man down the corridor at the mall said, “That boy didn’t shoot at nobody. He’s dead! They just killed that Black boy for no reason.” Alabama does not have laws against public carrying of firearms. And EJ’s mother, April Pipkins, says her son had been licensed to carry a weapon.

Time and time again, cops murder people, then lie and cover it up. So why did they admit Bradford, known as EJ, was not the shooter? Not because an innocent man had been murdered. Pro-police “law enforcement analyst” Tom Fuentes “explained” on CNN that they had to do this because the actual shooter was still on the loose.

Reportedly, the pigs didn’t even notify EJ’s family right away about the murder. The family described how awful it was to learn about EJ’s death on social media, including video footage of him lying in a pool of blood on the mall floor.

On Saturday, November 24, more than 200 people, including several of EJ’s relatives, demonstrated outside the mall to demand justice. People with signs reading "Justice for EJ" and "Black Lives Matter” and chanting “No justice, no peace, no racist police” marched around the mall and then went inside.

EJ’s father, a former Marine, works at a jail for the Birmingham police. Ironically, EJ had wanted to join the U.S. military, which goes all around the world murdering, brutalizing and dominating oppressed people. A military which serves the interest of the ruling class that in the U.S. unleashes the police to “serve and protect” their capitalist-imperialist system and, as part of that, murder and terrorize people, especially Black, Latino, and Native people.

This was the second time in two weeks an innocent Black man was killed because a cop simply saw a “Black man with a gun.” On November 11, 26-year-old Jemel Roberson, an armed security guard in a bar just south of Chicago, was trying to subdue a shooter when a cop arrived, and Roberson was killed by the pig.

EJ, like Roberson, is now added to the list of more than 850 people who have been shot and killed by police in the United States this year.

As shoppers ran from a shooting scene, a cop at the mall confronted Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., a 21-year-old Black man, and shot him dead.