Who killed Brandon Tate-Brown?

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Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly by Socialist Action Publishing Association, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Socialist Action, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610. RATES: For one year (12 issues, 1st-class Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These are expressed in editorials. Socialist Action is edited, Why did Philadelphia cops kill Brandon Tatesince he had committed no crime? And what were the names of the officers who shot the young Black man?

His mother, Tanya Brown-Dickerson, has been searching for answers. “Brandon was a beautiful and spirited young man,” Brown told a reporter for Roots. “All he wanted was to laugh and have fun. He didn’t want to die. … He would never be confrontational with police.”

More than two months after the Dec. 15 killing, the police department finally allowed BrownDickerson and her attorneys to view a video taken at the scene. The footage revealed that the young Black man was not carrying a weapon when he was shot in the back of the head. The video and statements by witnesses contradict the account of the incident that police gave to the press.

The killing of Brandon Tate-Brown appears to fit readily into the pattern that we saw with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., the strangling of Eric Garner in New York, and simi­ lar cases in which police have cut down Black people with abandon. These atrocities have mo­ tivated tens of thousands to protest the system­ atized racism at their core and to raise the call, “Black lives matter!”

There is some justification for the belief that TateBrown was pulled over for “driving while Black” with a new car in a mainly white neighborhood. Such ar­ bitrary traffic stops are not out of the question under Philadelphia’s stop and frisk policy—the most rigor­ ous of any big city in the nation. A report released last month by the American Civil Liberties Union and other attorneys found that at least 37 percent of the over 200,000 stops by Philadelphia police in 2014 were done without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. And although Blacks and Latinos make up 54 Socialist Action: Where we stand Socialist Action is a national organization of activists committed to the emancipation of workers and the oppressed. We strive to revitalize the antiwar, environmental, labor, antiracist, feminist, student, and other social movements with a mass-action perspective. In the process we hope to bring activists together from different backgrounds into a revolutionary workers’ party that can successfully challenge the wealthy elite—whose profit-driven system is driving down living standards and threatens all life on this planet.

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Name Address City State Phone E-mail Zip percent of the city’s population, over 80 percent of the stops involved people from these groupings.

In the early hours of Dec. 15, Brandon Tate-Brown, a 26-year-old employee at a car rental agency, was returning home in a late-model Dodge Charger when police officers pulled him over and asked him to step out of the car. Several minutes later, Tate-Brown was dead.

Within weeks of the confrontation, the still un­ named cops who were involved were exonerated of any blame by the police department and returned to street duty. The police department attempted to queers, national minorities, etc. We support the right of self-determination for oppressed nationalities, including Blacks, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans. We are internationalists, and hold that workers of one country have more in common with workers of another than with their own nation’s capitalist class. We seek to link struggles across national boundaries, and to build an international revolutionary movement that will facilitate the sharing of experiences and political lessons. That is why we maintain fraternal relations with the Fourth International Recognizing the divisions that exist on the left and within the workers’ movement, we seek to form united front type organizations around specific issues where various groups have agreement. In this way we seek to maximize our impact and demonstrate the power and effectiveness of mass action.

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[email protected] • Minneapolis/St. Paul: (612) 8021482, [email protected] • New York City: (212) 781-5157 • Philadelphia: [email protected] with a terse statement to the press. They said that the officers had pulled over TateBrown’s car because the headlights were out. Then, when the cops approached the car, they saw a handgun lying on top of its center console. After they asked the victim to step out, he struggled with them and ran back to the car to retrieve the gun. The po­ lice then opened fire, allegedly to protect themselves.

However, Tanya Brown-Dickerson and her attorney, Brian Mildenberg, found from their investigations that the autopsy report, the video, and statements from witnesses all contain major differences from the version of the story released pub­ licly by police officials.

The video demonstrated, for one thing, that the car’s headlights were on at the time the police stopped it. Moreover, head­ lights were not even mentioned in the medical examiner’s autopsy report.

The autopsy report stated that the of­ ficers had asked Tate-Brown to step out of his car because they had run his plates and found they were registered to a differ­ ent car-rental agency than the one that the victim had mentioned to them. One of the officers noticed the gun, the report stated, after he and his partner had approached the car a second time—not upon their initial approach, as police officials repeatedly maintained.

According to the head of the city’s Police Advisory Commission, witnesses at the scene have stated that at one point the cops and the victim struggled, and that Tate-Brown managed to break free. He was grabbed again by the officers, but was able to escape a second time and was shot from behind as he ran to­ ward the car.

In recent days, Tanya Brown-Dickerson and her at­ (continued on page 3, in “Will U.S. send heavy weapons to Ukraine?”) • Portland, Ore.: (503) 233-1629 [email protected] • Providence: [email protected] (401) 592-5385 • Salem, Ore.: [email protected] • San Francisco Bay Area:

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