Blacks in America: We live under the shadow of death

 LeGrier and Jones Families Demand Answers From Chicago Police

from Chicago Defender News

                Fatal shooting victims Bettie Jones and Quintonio LeGrier

With all that has happened and all that has come to fore  like the release the videos showing Laquan McDonald’s fatal shooting by white police; the Ronald Johnson fatal shooting by white police; the mishandling of Phillip Coleman by police, which led to hid death; and then there was  the acquittal of  police commander  Glenn Evans of all charges for allegedly shoving a gun down Ricky William’s throat; it seems that business continues as usual in Chicago.  

Police have released few details about the December 26 shooting,  saying in a statement, “11th District Harrison officers responded to a domestic disturbance on the 4700 block of West Erie St. Upon arrival, officers were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon, fatally wounding two individuals. The matter remains under investigation and all further inquiries can be directed to the Independent Police Review Authority.”

On the morning the day after Christmas two families found themselves mourning the death of their loved ones, both shot by Chicago police officers after officers around 4:30 am responding to a call about a domestic disturbance shot and killed  19-year-old engineering student, Quintonio LeGrier and a 55-year-old Bettie Jones, mother of five.

Bettie Jones lived in the first-floor apartment with her boyfriend. She was the mother of four daughters and a son. The daughters are 38, 33 and 19-year old twins. The son is 30.

Police were offering few details of the early-morning shooting, the first use of lethal force by Chicago police since last month’s release of a video of Laquan McDonald’s death put a national spotlight on the city. The  shootings follow weeks of protests over the death of Laquan McDonald, which have put the spotlight on the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Officers were called to the home located on West Garfield Park around 4:30 a.m. The  police report states  a dispatcher related that a “male caller said someone is threatening his life. It’s also coming in as a domestic. The 19-year-old son is banging on his bedroom door with a baseball bat,” according to radio traffic.

The officers were “confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon, fatally wounding two individuals,” the department said in a brief statement.

Family members of  Quintonio LeGrier, an honors student at Northern Illinois University said  he had been struggling with mental health issues recently. 

According to Janet Cooksey, LeGrier’s  mother, she and his father had spoken about taking him to the hospital for re-evaluation  after the holidays.  She mentioned that he had been taking medication which seemed  make his behavior worse so she had suggested that he stop taking it.

Both families have said that Bettie Jones was a downstairs neighbor who had been asked by LeGrier’s father to keep an eye out for the arrival of the police. 

No official statement by the police or any other  source has provided an account as to how both LeGrier and Jones came to be wounded by one of the officers in front of the  two-flat in the 4700 block of West Erie Street.

LeGrier’s father, Mr. LaGrier reported that his son had “emotional issues” that made him angry. He had made the call because his son acted agitated and was carrying an aluminum baseball bat. He believes the officer “messed up” and shot recklessly as his son came to the front door, hitting him several times and also striking Jones.

“I don’t feel that his life was worth losing because he got upset,” Antonio LeGrier said.

If this is true  questions have to be answered.  Did the victims demonstrate any reason to shoot them? Bettie Jones certainly had no weapon and Le Grier may or may not have been holding a bat but definitely no gun. Further, how close were the police to the two victims? Was there any verbal exchange?

Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, who represents the district where the shooting occurred, said in a statement, “At this point, we are confronted with a series of unanswered and deeply troubling questions.  Why did the officers on the scene need to resort to the use of their firearms to subdue a young man with a bat? Why weren’t the officers equipped with tasers so that Quintonio could be subdued without lethal force? How, during an officer response, did a 55-year-old mother of five come to be struck dead by bullets?”

Antonio LeGrier, the victim’s father said the officer who shot his son was about 30 feet away. He said the officer told him Quintonio LeGrier lunged at him with the bat.
“In my opinion, he knew he had messed up. It was senseless,” Antonio LeGrier told the Sun-Times about the unnamed officer. “He knew he had shot, blindly, reckless into the doorway and now two people are dead because of it.”

Jones’ relatives believe she was behind LeGrier, near the entrance to her apartment, and was shot by mistake.  Jones’ daughter  says she was shot opening a door for officers
Evelyn Glover Jennings, Jones’ cousin said of Bettie Jones, “She’s my first cousin”I want this investigation to be thorough. I want answers,”

Being smart and careful the Police Department would not provide specifics regarding   where the victims were standing when they were shot, but blood could be seen in the small vestibule and just inside Jones’ apartment.  At least one bullet appeared to have traveled through Jones’ apartment, hitting at least two walls.

Jones’ daughter,  Latisha Jones, 19, was awaken by  gunfire, got up and found her mother on the floor of her apartment with a gunshot wound to the neck. “She wasn’t saying anything,” Jones said. “I had to keep checking for a pulse.” However she was still breathing.  Jones was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Janet Cooksey, LeGrier’s mother criticized how police handled the situation.  Confused as to why her son was shot 7 seven times she expressed that she thought that a little excessive.

“He’s gone, he’s gone. Seven times he was shot,” Cooksey said. “He didn’t have a gun. He had a bat. One or two times would have brought him down.

“I’m trying to be strong because I pray. But that’s my only child. And I’m hurting. I’m hurting real bad,” she said.

She noted that her son “had mental issues” but insisted they were no cause for how police reacted.

“They did tell me he was shot seven times. That’s a bit much. That’s a bit much,” she said. “I don’t take all of that. My son only weighed about 150 pounds. Why do you have to be shot that many times? Why? If the police are trained in the field, then how, they’re just handling the situation by killing people?”

Cooksey noted  that her son was no thug on the street but rather a  graduate  from Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy with honors. He was studying engineering at Northern Illinois University.  Cooksey said, “My son was going somewhere.”

The police officials said  investigators were waiting for the autopsy to determine how many times LeGrier was shot an that  investigators were looking into whether responding officers knew they were dealing with someone with mental health issues and whether anyone on the scene was equipped with a Taser. No gun was recovered at the scene.

Family members of  Bettie Jones s said they, too, have “so many questions and no answers.”

Her brother, Melvin Jones  said, “Right now there’s a whole lot of anger, a whole lot of tears.

Melvin Jones explained that he and about 15 other relatives were at the apartment Friday to celebrate Christmas with food, family and card games.  He said that his sister had  an excellent Christmas.  “And then to wake up to this.

“You see it on the news and think that something needs to be done,” Melvin Jones said, referring to recent shootings by Chicago police. “It really hits you and it just leaves you numb. He added “I don’t have time to feel, I have a funeral to prepare.”

 Bettie Jones’ youngest brother, Robin Andrews, who drove in from Milwaukee upon receiving the sad news,  said that Bettie had been battling ovarian cancer for several years and had recently taken time off at work to recuperate.

The family had thought that there was hope so the news of her death really hit them har

 

 

Under the Shadow of Death

By The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad 

We, the Black lost-found of our people here in America live under the shadow of death by way of cowardly enemies. Every one of us—the cowardly enemies seek our deaths, one way or another.
The cowardly enemies will not fight you as a brave man would fight you if they think that you would fight back. They will steal on you when you least expect an attack from them. 

We live under the shadow of death. We fled from the cowardly enemy devils of the South, seeking refuge in the same cowardly enemies’ brother in the North. The enemy devils of the South followed us to the North to see that his brother of the North does not treat us any better than they did in the South.

They seek police jobs so that they can beat and kill us who are trying to escape. They seek to kill us, or get us killed, at any price. They do not care about our loyalty to them. In their hearts there is death for us, the Black Man in America.

Today, they hold out promises to you only to deceive you. They know that Allah (God) is here offering to seat us in heaven at once. And since hell is their appointed place, they are trying to get us to go to hell with them on false promises.

I have told you. Believe it or let it alone. We live "Under The Shadow of Death."

Killer-Cops and the War on Black America

by Paul Street on Wed, 08/15/2012 

by Paul Street

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s groundbreaking report on police killings of Blacks is a snapshot of war. “The executions continue nationwide: from north to south, east to west, in rural towns and large metropolitan areas.” The police and other racist pull the triggers, but warfare is a group effort. “Racially biased media coverage is intimately related to the chilling indifference most of the nation shows towards quickly forgotten incidents of unjustified white-on-black police killing.”

 

Killer-Cops and the War on Black America

by Paul Street

“46% were killed without the police even pretending that the victims were wielding weapons.”

You probably know about Trayvon Martin, the young back man shot dead by the young white neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman last February 26^th. Trayvon’s case became a national sensation, sparking large demonstrations across the country

It is possible that you have heard of Ramarley Graham, an 18 year-old black man followed to his home in the Bronx and killed there by police (who falsely claimed that he “ran away”) last February 2^nd. Graham’s killing and the subsequent charging of the officer who murdered him with a single shot received coverage in The New York Times.

I doubt, however, that you have heard of Wendell Allen, a black 20 year-old former high school basketball star who was shot in the back while wearing pajamas by New Orleans police who invaded his home on marijuana suspicions. There were four children in the house when Allen was murdered by white officers from the infamous NOPD last March 7^th. (Large mobilizations and a Grand Jury investigation followed).

I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a 31 year-old black man named Manuel Loggins, Jr. either. Last February 10^th, the former Marine sergeant was shot dead by San Clemente, California police while he was praying and exercising at a local school track. After witnessing the murder of their father, his two daughters, 9 and 14, were detained in isolation for 13 hours.

You didn’t likely hear anything either about Johnnie Warren, a 43-year old black man who used to live in Dothan, Alabama. Last February 15^th, Warren was killed by police taser there for the crime of pubic intoxication.

Or Stephon Watts, a black 15 year-old mentally disturbed boy shot to death by Calumet City, Illinois police last February 1^st. Cops responding to a 911 call exercised deadly force after finding Watts in possession of a harmless pen knife.

Or Raymond Allen, a 34-year-old black man who was hog-tied and tasered to death after being picked up by Galveston, Texas cops for “suspicion of being under the influence of drugs” last February 29^th.

“The list of Black Americans killed by white cops this year goes on and on.”

Or Angelo Clark, a 31 year-old black man, killed by a SWAT team searching for drugs in his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, last January. Clark was accused of pointing an AK-47 at the police but he had no way of knowing that the people who broke into his home were police until after he was shot.

And then there’s Justin Sipp, a 20-year-old black man shot dead by an NOPD officer with a long history of brutality. Sipp died because he argued with the cops after being pulled over for “look[ing] suspicious” as he drove with a broken taillight last March 1^st.

And Nehemiah Dillard, a 29 year-old black man tasered to death for “behaving strangely” in Gainesville, Florida last March 5^th.

And Dante Price, a 25-year-old black man shot 22 times by White Ranger Security guards at Summer Square apartments in Dayton, Ohio last March 1^st. Price was on his way to baby-sit his children. (Significant community protests and a Grand Jury investigation followed)

And Rekia Boyd, 22, an innocent bystander shot to death by an off-duty Chicago cop who was angry over loud noise in a city park last March 27^th.

The list of Black Americans killed by white cops this year goes on and on. It’s an epidemic. As researchers Ariene Eisen and Kali Akuno show in a detailed report prepared for the Malcom X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) last month, we know of at least 120 cases of black people being killed by police, security guards, and “self-appointed law-enforcers“ (e.g. George Zimmerman) between January 1 and June 30^th, 2012. That’s 1 killing every 36 hours.

MXGM’s Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 120 Black Peopleⁱ provides a chilling anatomy of racist, state-terrorist murder. Of the 120 black lives taken by police, guards, and vigilantes in the first seven months of this year:

• 46% were killed without the police even pretending that the victims were wielding weapons.
• 36% were killed with the police claiming that the victims wielded weapons but with the claim challenged by witnesses and/or family members.
• Just 18% were incontestably armed.
• Just 12.5% actually shot at officers.
• 69% were ages 13 to 31.
• 11% were children under 18.
• 28% suffered from mental health problems that contributed to their deaths.
• 31% had engaged in no conduct that could have reasonably been called criminal.
• 40% came into fatal contact with their killers because of police “stop and frisk” interventions conducted on the pretext of “suspicious behavior,” “suspicious appearance” or “traffic violations.”
• More than a third were attempting to “run away” when they were killed.
• 9% were suspected of nothing at all (e.g. Rekia Boyd)
• 38% were forgotten: “a careful Internet search could not find their names after an initial flurry of news about their killings” (Eisen and Akuno).

Subtracting 15 cases in which victims shot at officers, Eisen and Akuno recovered 105 incidents in which black Americans died in what amounted to “extrajudicial executions.”

In many cases where the victims used or threatened violence they did do so without having any reason to know that the killers who stopped them or entered their homes were police. (the Angelo Clark case is one example).

The killers have faced little in the way of investigation or prosecution. Six security guards and “self-appointed law-enforcers” – the most notable example in the second category is George Zimmerman (jailed only after a remarkable national protest wave) – have been charged. Just 3 police officers have been charged – one for vehicular homicide-DUI and 3 for manslaughter.

“More than a third were attempting to “run away” when they were killed.”

“The executions continue,” Eisen and Akuno note, “nationwide: from north to south, east to west, in rural towns and large metropolitan areas.” It is not a “southern problem,” through some Southern cities (Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, New Orleans, and Jacksonville) seem to conduct street executions of blacks “in numbers disproportionate to the size of their Black populations.”

It seems likely that the MXGM report is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the extrajudicial killing of American minorities. There is no official database, public or private, that records incidents of excessive police or security guard force against blacks or Latinos (The latter are also frequent police shooting and stop-and-frisk targets, as in Anaheim, California, where repeated cop killings of young Hispanics recently sparked riots). Eisen and Akuno had to compile their list as best they could by spending days combing the Internet for newspaper, television, police, eyewitness and other reports. ⁱⁱ

It should be noted (without disparaging the remarkable MXGM report) that direct police killings contribute a relatively small part of the death count generated by white America’s war on U.S. blacks. The antiwar group Iraq Body Count grossly understated the real number of civilian casualties resulting from the criminal U.S. invasion of Iraq because it restricted its list of victims to those who could be shown in multiple sources to have been directly killed by U.S. bombs, missiles, bullets, or artillery. Many more Iraqis died prematurely because of health and safety issues related to the U.S. invasion’s destruction of civilian and public infrastructure (water treatment, electricity, health services, food supplies, and the like) and the general disruption of daily life.

In a similar vein, millions of blacks die far too soon because of the broad catastrophe that is institutional racism. Racial oppression’s terrible toll has intensified amidst the latest capitalist depression even as it is more cloaked than ever by the existence of a “first black president.” Endemic systemic economic and public disinvestment, persistent savage residential and school segregation, financial starvation of black schools, epic racist mass incarceration and felony marking (what Michelle Alexander rightly calls “The New Jim Crow”), continuing job (hiring and promotion) discrimination, lack of medical access and health coverage, absent green space, the concentration of frustration and weapons – all of this and more create Third World poverty, disease, and mortality rates across much of black America.

“Millions of blacks die far too soon because of the broad catastrophe that is institutional racism.”

Black pain is furthered by a deeply embedded cultural racism that is reflected and reproduced in the dominant mass media. The reigning corporate-Caucasian communications empire presents inner city black males as menacing, drug-addled thugs and black females as lazy, over-sexed “welfare-shoppers.” The metropolitan Ten and Eleven O’clock news stoke white suburban fear and disgust with an endless procession of black gang-bangers and murderers without an iota of context on the policies, practices, and structures of institutional racism that create misery and early death in the nation’s persistently separate and unequal black communities. Racially biased media coverage is intimately related to the chilling indifference most of the nation shows towards quickly forgotten incidents of unjustified white-on-black police killing.

The epidemic of extrajudicial execution continues. On July 29^th, a 21 year-old black man named Chavis Carter was shot and killed while handcuffed in a patrol car in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Carter had been pulled over and searched by officers who found a $10 bag of marijuana in his car. The police have absurdly claimed that he committed suicide.

On August 11^th, New York City shot to death a 51 year-old black man they had approached for allegedly smoking marijuana in Manhattan’s Times Square. Wielding an 11-inch knife and wearing a bandana, Darrius Kennedy was killed by no less than 12 NYPD bullets in front of hundreds of horrified tourists and city residents. Welcome to the Big Apple!

Why this plague of white police-on-black citizen killings? Along with the recent upsurge of hate groups and “antigovernment patriot organizations,” the police shootings likely reflect (among other things) white fears sparked by the changing racial demographics of the nation. Whites are projected to become a minority by 2050. In the mind of many Caucasians, including some police officers, these changing demographics are personified by the technically nonwhite identity of the nation’s “first black president.”

“Don’t look for a Justice Department investigation of the current killer cop wave anytime soon.”

Never mind that the “post-racial” Barack Obama (who rose to national prominence with a speech proclaiming that there is “no such thing as a black America or a white America” and who saved his presidential candidacy with a speech announcing that racism was a problem located only in the American past, not the present) is on board with dominant white victim-blaming explanations of black poverty. And never mind that he refuses to undertake any policy designed to meaningfully address specific black grievances and issues. (Don’t look for a Justice Department investigation of the current killer cop wave anytime soon). Proto-fascist whites do not make or get distinctions between tepid, system-serving moderates like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Booker T. Washington and those who actually fight for social justice like Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Just as there’s no number of overseas Muslims that Obama could extra-judicially execute to shake white 21^st century Amerikanners of their faith in his Muslim identity and allegiances, there’s no amount of tolerance Obama could show to those who stalk, imprison, and kill black Americans that would disabuse the racists of their belief that he is a threat to white privilege.

Paul Street (www.paulstreet.org) is the author of numerous books, including Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm, 2004), Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (Rowman&Littlefield, 2007), The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Paradigm, 2010), and (co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio) Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Paradigm, 2011). Street can be reached at paulstreet99@yahoo.com.