Alan Blueford of Oakland, CA, age 18, was shot and killed after being stopped for being, young, Black, male and "acting suspiciously." His last words were "I didn't do anything."
Manual Diaz of Anaheim, CA, age 25, was shot in the back and killed as he ran away after officers decided to check him out because he was standing next to a car, talking to other young, Hispanic men inside it.
Derrick Gaines, age 15, was shot and killed in South San Francisco after officers stopped him and his friends for "acting suspiciously."
Ramarley Graham, age 18, was shot and killed in his own bathroom after being chased there by a New York City police officer over a bit of marijuana.
There are far too many more.
Each case makes headlines. Each time the police announce that the officer thought that the deceased had a weapon. Usually no charges are brought, and in the cases when they are filed police officers are almost always acquitted -- rarely if ever is an officer of the law convicted of murder for the execution of a young man of color -- even if he was unarmed and shot from behind.
Eventually the case fades from memory, to be replaced by the next. As the cycle begins anew.
It's way past time for this to end.
The Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition is attempting change this dynamic. On November 10th, 2012, in downtown Oakland, we will be staging a rally and march Against Police Brutality, to End Racial Profiling, and in Opposition to Stop & Frisk Policies which aid and abet such.
We have invited the families of the victims of police murders from around the Bay Area and Northern California, some going back as much as twenty years, to speak. We have reached out to local organized labor and have gotten endorsements for this action by local ILWU and SEIU chapters; their representatives will be speaking. Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America will also be lending his voice to ours.
The Blueford family is committed to seeing that what happened to their son and so many others does not happen again. The Blueford family has reached out to families in other states like the Grahams, and organizations in New York City fighting Stop & Frisk. They even managed to get caught in Hurricane Sandy before escaping to Philadephia to meet with Mumia Abu-Jamal (below, center, with Alan's parents on either side).
The Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition is attempting to build a broad base of support both locally and across the nation to confront police violence and racial bias against young men of color, and more generally what some have come to realize as the reality in this country: The New Jim Crow.
We are pressing at a local level, attempting the herculean task of making the Oakland City Council have any awareness of the problem. We are attempting to move on a state level, taking aim at California's Policeman Bill of Rights, which provides a 'get out of trouble free' card for California's Peace Officers. We are attempting to move on a national level by raising awareness of this problem and forging bonds with other groups across the country.
We have done community barbeques to raise awareness. We have staged press conferences. We have denounced Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley's whitewash investigation which concluded that Officer Miguel Masso, who shot Alan Blueford, should not be charged. We also produced an extensive rebuttal to the DA's investigative report. We are releasing a letter to Judge Thelton Henderson, the Federal Judge overseeing the Oakland Police and their path to Federal Receivership, asking him to be aware of OPD's racist policies when determining what measures to order implemented (reproduced below).
And we are only just beginning.
If you are in the Bay Area, please come and join us on Saturday, November 10th at noon at 14th & Broadway, aka City Center, aka Oscar Grant Plaza, in downtown Oakland. It is time to put the 'Equal' and 'Protection' back into the 14th Amendment.
An Open Letter to Judge Thelton Henderson
The Honorable Thelton Henderson
Senior District Judge
San Francisco Courthouse, Courtroom 12 - 19th Floor
450 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
In a little over a month you will be hearing arguments on a motion to put the Oakland Police Department into federal receivership. Whatever measures you ultimately decide to take, the Justice For Alan Blueford Coalition (JAB) implores you to consider the issue of racial profiling as it pertains to the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, the Oakland Police and Oakland's communities of color.
On May 6th, 2012, an 18 year old high school senior was killed by an Oakland Police officer. We believe that those who can read between the lines of the District Attorney's report on Alan Blueford's death will infer that he and his friends were stopped not because of what they were doing, but because they were young, male and Black. This de facto 'Stop and Frisk' policy that the Oakland Police uses -- but would never admit to -- initiated the cascade of events that ultimately led to Alan Blueford dying on the pavement of a driveway in East Oakland, telling the police officer who shot him "I didn't do anything!"
What is particularly frustrating is that the Negotiated Settlement Agreement takes special note of the problem with unconstitutional stops and racial profiling. Yet the Oakland Police are not in compliance with even the small steps they agreed to take with respect to dealing with these problems by signing the NSA almost a decade ago. As part of the NSA's requirements, analysis of stops by Oakland Police officers as to whether they are constitutional is mandated (Task 34). And yet from the Monitor's latest report:
"... we remain concerned that the reason for the stop is not clearly identified to support the Constitutional standards requirement... The Department is not in compliance with Task 34.2"
Also, as part of the NSA's requirements (Task 24), use of force must be justified and subject to critique. And yet, again from the Monitor's latest report on compliance (24.3):
"The total racial breakdown for the 38 use of force events reviewed is as follows: Black, 73%; Hispanic, 18%; White, 1%; Asian, 7%; and Other, 1%. We also tabulated the racial breakdown of the subjects involved in the events where, in our opinion, the pointing of a firearm was not necessary or appropriate and found the following: Black, 94%; and Hispanic, 6%. In all cases, the supervisory review found the officers' use of force appropriate... the apparent unquestioned supervisory and command approval -- of both the documentation of officers' actions and the actions themselves -- is illustrative of a need to address supervisory deficiencies..."
We understand the difficulty of making judgments in fluid situations while having to weigh both constitutionality and threat. We also know full well how easy it is for police officers to make up a reason for a stop that passes constitutional muster when in fact the true reason is bias, explicit or implicit, towards a person's gender, race, age, clothing, apparent sexual orientation or hairstyle. Some of us have had the experience of being stopped on Oakland streets, while others listened in horror as they told us their stories. Some of us have also listened to the testimony of New York's citizens as they told their City Council the horror stories New York City's explicit Stop and Frisk policy has engendered in their communities: jobs lost, injuries, beatings, gropings, and unwarranted arrests, to name a few.
We also understand how difficult it is to curb such behavior on the part of a police force; nonetheless we feel that such curbs, along with appropriate training, must be put in place or Oakland's Police will never have the respect of the communities with which they interact nor will Oakland's police ever have respect for many of Oakland's residents.
We do not know exactly what kinds of redress are appropriate but we note that New York City is currently considering the Community Safety Act, a set of proposed laws which are designed to curb the worst abuses Stop and Frisk engenders.
In closing, here are the words of Jeralynn Blueford, Alan's mother, who spoke passionately at a recent press conference called by JAB to respond to a woefully inadequate DA investigation into the police killing of her son . Jeralynn's words strongly resonate in the hearts of the people of Oakland:
"We will not take this in our community... There's too many deaths here in Oakland, California. Stop the killing! Stop the violence! You don't just harass someone because of the color of their skin. Our families fought for civil rights and I will fight for Alan's civil rights!"
Thank you for your time and your consideration.
The Justice For Alan Blueford Coalition
If you are in the Bay Area, please come join us on Saturday, November 10th at noon at 14th & Broadway, aka City Center, aka Oscar Grant Plaza, in downtown Oakland. It is time to put the 'Equal' and 'Protection' back into the 14th Amendment. Please help.
-----
Credits:
-- The 'bang, bang, bang' photo was taken by Alyssa.
-- The underlying art for that photo was done by nite owl, who also decorated the OccuBus (scroll down). This art piece is part of an exhibit about Alan Blueford put together by Mollie Costello at the 25th St. Collective in Oakland, CA.
-- I'm not sure who took the original Mumia picture, but Alyssa had the shot in her album.
-- Mollie Costello took the altar picture.