Racist police terror: a year of struggle

HARLEM—The Washington Post has documented that 903 of our brothers and sisters were killed by kkkops in 2016. That’s more than two times the number reported by the FBI. This furious statistic compares with a Berea College study that estimates that an average of 54 lynchings a year were committed between 1882 and 1968. The U.S. bosses now arm and train a much deadlier “Klan in Blue” under the cover of white sheets. This racist practice is designed to intimidate all from fighting with multiracial unity. But where they have failed, we will succeed as the working class join in mass struggle against this racist capitalist system.
According to the same Washington Post survey, 418 of those killed by cops were white; 205 Black; 163 Latin: A total of 368 were Black and Latin! These figures prove that no worker is safe under this system. Seventy percent of the U.S. population is white, while 30 percent is Black and Latin. This huge display of racial disproportion, as because Black and Latin workers are killed at a rate three times higher than their white counterpart.
The Post evaluated that one out of four of these killings involved people undergoing mental crisis. Typically, family, friends, or neighbors become aware of a person suffering an acute, psychotic episode.  They call for help and too often the only number available is 911. Police arrive in uniform with visible weapons and command the person in crisis to surrender. A conflict ensues, and the person in need of help ultimately is shot dead, instead.
Deborah Danner
Over the past year, PLP comrades and friends in our congregation joined in many struggles for justice, first, on behalf of Deborah Danner who was killed in the Bronx on October 18, 2016 under the same circumstances. We rallied with many others in front of her building, and then marched to the precinct to demand prosecution of Sgt. Hugh Barry who claimed he feared for his life because this elderly woman approached him with a baseball bat.
Barry didn’t even thin of less violent tactics. Instead, with two shots to her torso, he murdered her life. After seven months delay Sgt. Barry was finally indicted for murder. Still, no trial date has been set: No doubt Police Benevolent Association lawyers are working around the clock to get the indictment thrown out, as was Richard Haste’s for the killing of Ramarley Graham in February of 2012.”Justice delayed is justice denied”!
The multiracial Justice and Peace Committee scoured the internet to find whatever response the cops’ officialdom had made to this telling evaluation. For months, nothing! Finally, we brought this travesty to the attention of our church’s governing board which, in July 2017, issued a firm request to the Police Commissioner and the Mayor asking for documentation of a response to the Inspector General’s report.
PLP understands this system depends on racism to thrive. Which is why we must continue to fight back. Erickson Brito, James Owens, Ariiel Galarza, Dwayne Jeune, Alexander Bonds, and Miguel Richards:  All brothers in mental distress (Black or Latin) shot to death by NYPD from November 2016 in Brooklyn to September 2017 in the Bronx.  And all killings were pronounces “justified” according to NYPD protocol. A police body camera chillingly documents Mr. Richard’s death on You Tube- a classic psychotic “suicide by cop “ case where the psychotic victim is goaded to expose his toy gun by belligerent military police orders before the fatal shots were fired. These racist killings will continue until the workers raise up and defeat the racist capitalist of the world!
PLP have repeatedly organized and demonstrated in solidarity with several victims, their families and friends. And, most importantly, we have reached out to a wide number of community organizations and congregations to develop a fighting platform to struggle to take away resources from the NYPD in order to fund civilian mental health-trained personnel who should be the first responders in all cases involving people in mental distress.
As members of PLP we understand that no reform is premiant and the only true way to free the working class from the horrors of this system is to over throw it with communist revolution! As the fighters against apartheid in South Africa powerfully sang “We have just begun to FIGHT, we have only started!”