NY cops gun down another Black youth

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The African American community is reeling from the cop murder of Kimani “Kiki” Gray. The killing has sparked out­ rage that has resulted in street protests from New York City to San Francisco.

Kimani was shot dead on March 9 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, when two NYPD cops fired 11 shots at the 16 year old. Seven bullets found their mark, three from behind.

Kimani, a student at the Urban As­ sembly School of Design and Construc­ tion, was with a group of friends on the street while reportedly returning home from a baby shower. Suddenly, a little before midnight, according to wit­ nesses, two plainclothes officers ap­ proached the grouping in an unmarked sedan. The cops yelled: “Don’t move!” and drew their guns.

Police say Kimani pointed a gun at the officers, and they have displayed a .38 revolver allegedly recovered at the scene—a gun that many suspect is a “throw down” or a plant. Most witness­ es insist that Kimani was unarmed.

Even NYPD top cop Ray Kelly, when asked by the press if anyone saw Gray with a gun, answered “no.” Yet Kelly has maintained that there was “noth­ ing to indicate that this shooting was outside the guidelines.” The two offi­ cers involved, Sgt. Mourad Mourad and Jovaniel Cordova, were both assigned to desk duty pending “investigations.” Both faced five federal lawsuits charg­ ing illegal stop-and-frisks to physical abuse, costing the city $215,000.

Multiple witnesses state that Kimani was heard to have said, “Please don’t let me die,” as he lay wounded. The New York Times reported that one wit­ ness who lives across the street from the shooting, described only as Vanessa, recalled that the officers barked at Gray, “Stay down, or we’ll shoot you again.” Witness Sharon Smith told The Village Voice that she saw the shooting and that her daughter was outside when it happened: “[She] heard him say ‘don’t kill me, don’t kill me.’ And they say ‘stay still’ or they going to shoot you again.”

One eyewitness, Tishana King, 39, who was inter­ viewed by The Village Voice newspaper, said that she had observed the incident from her third-floor apart­ ment. King said she saw “about seven to eight” young people, who congregated for “maybe a minute or two” before cops arrived. “There was no suspicious behav­ ior. The worst they were doing, laughing out loud and, you know, talking loud. That’s about it.” King said that the cop who did the most shooting, “just kept shoot­ ing while [Gray] was on the ground.” King explained that he was, “right over him.” She heard Gray scream, “’Help me. Help me. My stomach is burning. Help me. They shot me.”

Kimani’s devastated mother, Carol Gray, has called for peaceful vigils in her son’s name. Kimani’s family and supporters have called for an independent inves­ tigation into the killing. Hundreds attended the March 23 funeral for Kimani at the St. Catherine of Genoa Catholic Church in Brooklyn.

The autopsy result, released March 13, sparked three days of protest and rebellion that police and the capi­ talist press branded a “riot.” What the press described as “a splinter group” went into a Rite-Aid pharmacy, and damaged goods and a cash register. Two alterca­ tions with individuals, one a store manager, were re­ ported. No money was taken. Dozens were arrested and some brutalized. Later, Ray Kelly retracted the term “riot” to describe the protests. City Councilman Charles Barron called the neighborhood a “powder keg.”

In Brooklyn, a daily demonstration has been main­ 12 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 2013 Christopher Hutchinson / Socialist Action tained at 55th St. and Church Ave. in the face of a mas­ sive police presence intent on intimidating protesters. Protesters chant, “NYPD KKK, how many kids did you kill today?” “No justice, no peace, no racist police!” “Justice for Kimani Gray!” On March 24, cops were sta­ tioned on each block on Church Ave. within a mile of a protest that ended at the notorious 67th police pre­ cinct. Cops were staked out on rooftops, motorcycles, on foot, and on horseback, their belts bulging with plastic handcuffs. Their presence resem­ bled a military occupation of the community.

On March 21 in Oakland, Calif., protest­ Marty Goodman / Socialist Action policy, widely condemned as racial profiling. Last June, several thousand protesters marched to Bloomberg’s home on the exclusive Upper East Side in Manhattan. Said NAACP President Ben Jealous, a march organizer, “Stop and frisk is the most massive local racial profil­ ing program in the country.”

According to 2012 “stop and frisk” statistics released by the NY ACLU based on NYPD data, New Yorkers were stopped by cops 533,042 times. 89% were found totally innocent; 55% were Black, 32% were Hispanic and 10% white.

Despite widespread condemnation of his racist policies, Mayor Bloomberg hypocritically serves as a prominent spokesperson for gun registration and background checks, spending $12 million of his own money on national TV ads.

Recently, a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitu­ tional Rights, revealed for the first time secret tapes of top cops ordering police to racially profile minority youth to fulfill stop and frisk quotas. As reported in the New York Daily News, March 27, a tape made by Officer Pedro Serrano caught Deputy Inspector Chris­ topher McCormack saying that officers should stop “male blacks 14 to 21.”

The tapes also revealed the direct cooperation of the Police Benevolent Association, the phony cop union, in maintaining racist arrest quotas. PBA complicity shows once again that cops are not workers, but the hired guns of the 1%.

Resistance to racist police brutality will depend on building a united, inclusive mass movement. The cor­ porate press and a few activists have tried to divide the movement by redbaiting the participation of radi­ cal and socialist groups; this must be rejected.

Our massive numbers in the streets are the best way to make killer cops think twice about brutalizing and killing minority youth. We must build a movement to keep the pressure on the racist court system to win justice for Kimani.

Ultimately, police repression can only be eliminated by replacing the capitalist system, which relies on the police to keep oppressed people in line, and thrives on brutality both here and abroad. Justice for Kimani Gray! Stay in the streets! n Socialism 2013: