Cop murder of 'Kiko' Garcia is the last straw for Wash. Hts. residents

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Friends, relatives, and community members view the body of 'Kiko' on WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, N.Y.—The lessons of the Los Angeles rebellion are not being lost on the residents of this upper Manhattan neighborhood.

On July 3, an NYPD cop shot and killed José "Kiko" Garcia, a Dominican youth, on 162nd Street. By itself, there was little about this incident that was remarkable. Cops frequently kill Blacks and Hispanics, especially youth, in this city. But this time the anger of neighborhood residents against the cops, who are virtually an army of occupation, was furiously unleashed during five days of constant protests and confrontations with New York's "finest."

Police said they were chasing Jose Garcia because they thought he was a drug dealer. One cop, Officer Michael O'Keefe, cornered "Kiko" in the vestibule of a building between Broadway and St. Nicholas Avenue and shot him dead. O'Keefe claimed that Garcia had a gun.

But witnesses to the shooting told another version. The cops, they said, chased "Kiko" for no reason. He was unarmed, and they claim, "O'Keefe shot Garcia after he wrestled him to the floor." It was a case of cold-blooded murder.

"Fort Apache"

Washington Heights and Inwood, the neighborhood to the north, are largely Dominican in composition. On a typical summer evening, the avenues and streets are full of men and women, young and old, sitting on stoops and makeshift chairs and chatting or playing dominoes or keeping an eye on the kids.

Politics are dominated by political parties like the Dominican Workers Party (nationalist) or the PCD (Dominican Communist Party), and generally they only come alive when there is an election scheduled in Santo Domingo, the capitol of the Dominican Republic.

But the murder of "Kiko" on July 3 struck a chord of rage that had been building for a long time. Enraged residents pelted police with rocks and bottles. Some cars were overturned and set afire. Police helicopters buzzed the neighborhood, shining their floodlights everywhere.

During protests on Saturday, the Fourth of July, one man allegedly fell from a building. Residents say that he was thrown off the roof by the cops—a scene reminiscent of one in the movie "Fort Apache: the Bronx."

When I visited the neighborhood on July 6, I saw a car burning on 157th street on the other side of Broadway, and another up at 158th. A fire truck came by, firemen looked at the cars, and left. The trash cans afire in the middle of Broadway and the corrugated cardboard boxes piled a few feet high were obviously feeble but instinctual attempts to build barricades.

At first, Mayor Dinkins and Archbishop O'Connor-faithful defenders of private property, law and order, and the police came up to Washington Heights to appeal for "calm" and to promise an "investigation."

No one bought the line that Dinkins and O'Connor were trying to sell. Thus, City Hall moved to Plan B on July 7. Massive numbers of police were brought in. As I got off the subway after work, I counted over 60 cops on the four comers of Broadway and 157th Street alone!

Residents were compelled to retreat down side streets. Police helicopters disturbed the peace for what seemed like 24 hours a day. The occupation had begun, and would continue through the beginning of the Democratic Party National Convention.

Cop drug dealers

There was also a propaganda war going on. Rumors in the neighborhood included the charge that O'Keefe, the shooter, was in a group of cops in the 34th Precinct that called themselves "Local Motion." "Local Motion" members reportedly supplement their incomes by beating and robbing drug Ricky Flores/Impact Visuols dealers, and reselling market.

The 34th Precinct, the subject of recent exposés, is known as the most corrupt and graft-ridden precinct in the city. And Officer O'Keefe, it turns out, has been under investigation for more than a year by the District Attorney and the Police Department of Internal Affairs for stealing drugs and money from dealers.

The cops were annoyed by City Hall's announcement of this investigation. They got 95 percent backing instead of 100 percent, and they were furious about it. The fallout from this friction was not over. The first week of August, Police Commissioner Lee Brown resigned, purportedly for personal reasons.

Whether or not O'Keefe was involved in selling drugs is almost beside the point. In the many communities of oppressed minorities in this city, the cops have been given free reign to impose their own rules and regulations. This is a prescription for renegades.

During the funeral for José Garcia on July 6, hundreds of demonstrators marched through Washington Heights, demanding community control of the police so that they could bring O'Keefe, who is on unpaid suspension, to justice. "We're tired July 6.

of being pushed around," was the general theme of the march.

Even the NYPD's much heralded anti-drug programs are really targeted at terrorizing youth, and not at fighting drug dealing. I remember last summer when the Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) hit the 168th Street area. After the first day, a large number of the dealers moved down to 157th Street and operated unmolested. In the meantime, TNT was busy harassing, arresting, searching, and terrorizing the people who lived ten blocks north. When TNT finally went away, so did the dealers.

It is hard to assess the long-term effect of last month's events. There is certainly more awareness of the role of the police. A new organization, the Committee Against Police Brutality, has been formed. Obviously, the people of Washington Heights are tired of being pushed around by extortionists dressed in blue.

Daily Harassment During the year I worked in Harlem/Washington Heights, I witnessed two cases of how the police daily harass and terrorize the local residents. Once I saw a white officer pull a Dominican motorist to the side of the road. The young motorist was frightened, showing the police officer his empty wallet. "No dinero! No dinero!," he kept saying.

I was riding on my bicycle at the time, and when I tried to move closer, the cop yelled at me, "What are you looking at! Move!" When I didn't move fast enough, he commanded his partner to chase me in their car. I got away, but I still worry about the poor unfortunate, broke, victim of a police shakedown.

The second event I witnessed concerned a young Dominican man who, was learning to drive. A police van got stuck behind him and one of the cops went beserk. He opened the rear sliding door, cursing and ordering the driver to pull over. Then he jumped from the van and proceeded to pound on the driver's side of the car, screaming, "Get out!"

This outrageous intimidation drew a crowd of over 30 people-almost all Dominican. Seeing the growing crowd, the cop yelled at them, "Do you think you're at the movies? MOVE!" But nobody did, so the young Dominican driver was not injured by a cop who thought he could take the law into his own hands. Such racist police brutality is a fact of everyday life in Washington Heights.—DAWN REEL