Listening to Democracy Now this morning, Amy Goodman interviewed Bishop Erskine Williams, the pastor for two men wounded in the assault on Sean Bell. In the interview the pastor mentions that the white officer who fired over 31 bullets at the unarmed men had returned months before from Iraq.
Are we seeing the repercussions of the Iraq war on our streets?
I did a bit of research on the internet.... Here is what I found so far
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A portion of the transcript:
ERSKINE WILLIAMS: Well, I think that he was being fair in his assessment that the shooting was excessive. Anytime you have one police officer, namely this Mike Oliver that fired a 31 shots -- it was mentioned to us in the police commissioner's statements at the meeting at the mayor's office, that when they are trained, they are supposed to fire three rounds, assess the situation, fire three more rounds. That would say to me that he had to stop ten times during this barrage of 31 shots, which we know didn’t happen. Mike Oliver shooting 31 shots said to me clearly --
AMY GOODMAN: Mike Oliver was, of the five officers, the white officer?
ERSKINE WILLIAMS: Right. And that’s the racial element involved. A number of people are trying to say it’s not race-related, and I beg to differ, because when you have three black men in a car and a white cop that discharges his weapon 31 times, and he has to stop at some point, discharge a magazine and load another magazine in, the second magazine says to me there was an intent to execute and assassinate.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, interestingly, the official police report, again that I’ve obtained a copy of and was able to review, shows that when the first police sergeant, Sergeant Wheeler, arrived on the scene, and he had to question all of the officers as to whether they fired their guns, and Oliver actually said that he did not recall whether he had fired his gun, even though he's the only one who actually reloaded, emptied a magazine, reloaded and fired again. But he supposedly told the arriving sergeant on the scene, "I don’t recall if I fired my gun."
ERSKINE WILLIAMS: In one of the many meetings I was in, it was mentioned to us by one law enforcement person that what was introduced into this whole scenario is that Mike Oliver is nine months out of Iraq, so that might have attributed to him being trigger-happy.
In my search for references related to the Bell incident I found this interesting article from Record Online - Newburgh NY newspaper.
Newburgh — No one may ever know for sure why Antonio Bryant started shooting at a plainclothes cop as police allege he did Monday night.
But the picture emerging of the shootout that left 23-year-old Bryant dead in the middle of Broadway is one of a mundane traffic stop that exploded into a deadly foot chase with little warning. Police and Bryant exchanged at least a dozen shots at 7 p.m., when Broadway is busy with diners, shoppers and strollers.
The whizzing bullets and the bloody ending were bad enough, residents say.
But add to it Newburgh's decades-deep racial divide and the dead man's family history, and Monday night's drama left Newburgh a city on edge.
"It doesn't look right," said one 33-year-old woman at the scene on Broadway yesterday. Like many in this close-knit city, she knew Bryant mainly as the son of Omari Shakur, a 50-year-old poet and activist who is often a sharp critic of the mainly white police force. "It looks funny that his father had all those problems with police. It doesn't look right."
Over and over around the lit candles marking Bryant's death, the talk was not of Bryant gunning away at police; it was about a black Newburgh resident known on every block on both sides of Broadway killed by city police, few of whom live here, fewer still who are black.
City officials said they understood the pain of Bryant's friends and family and hoped grieving residents would come to the same conclusion preliminary investigations have — that police were acting in self-defense.
Yesterday afternoon, police Chief Eric Paolilli detailed the chain of events that led to Bryant's death and said he was confident a grand jury would reach the same conclusion he has: The officer who shot Bryant was justified in using deadly force.
"I believe this was a legitimate and justified shooting," he said.
Just the same, Newburgh braced for what might come.
Police planned extra patrols for last night. They called in sheriff's deputies and state police. City officials welcomed the annual Halloween curfew.
Even the Black Ministerial Fellowship, which had planned a unity prayer session for yesterday in response to the shooting, canceled it.
"We didn't want to have a meeting where we couldn't reach a solution because of people who might have come with reasons other than peace," said Dextro Tiller, pastor of the House of Joy on Liberty Street.
Police say the incident went like this:
At 7:06 p.m., Sgt. Frank Labrada, an eight-year veteran of the police force and a veteran of the Iraq war, was driving an unmarked police Crown Victoria on Van Ness Street, north of Broadway.
the rest of the article can be found at http://www.recordonline.com/...
I am searching for more incidents of returning Iraq veterans possibly bringing the violence of Iraq back here.
What are your thoughts and has any one heard of other incidents..
Peace!!