Fifty supporters of the fight for justice for Faison gathered here for a press conference the following day. Among the speakers were Earl Williams, Earl Faison's father; Larry Hamm of the People's Organization for Progress; and a representative of Black Cops Against Police Brutality.

Williams expressed dismay that no murder charges and no state charges had been filed. He called for protests in Trenton, the state capital. Williams told the press, "We like a little ray of sunshine, [but] we have a long way to go before justice is done."

Faison was one of four men arrested separately during a police rampage following the killing of Orange policewoman Joyce Carnegie on April 8, 1999.

Orange cops kicked, beat, pepper-sprayed, and robbed Faison, then lied about the incident. Another man, Condell Woodson, subsequently pleaded guilty to the killing of the police officer and was sentenced to life in prison.

The five cops, four of them white and one Black, were not indicted for Faison's death but for violating his civil rights. Faison, who was asthmatic, went into cardiac arrest soon after he was pepper-sprayed. A preliminary autopsy found that he died suddenly "due to acute exacerbation of bronchial asthma."

Federal authorities have declined to specify the cause of death. A full medical examiner's report is not yet public, and U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary said the investigation is continuing.

According to the indictment, as Faison lay on the sidewalk, hands handcuffed behind his back, one cop kicked him so that he was unable to walk, then another threw him into the back seat of a police car where he was beaten by two other cops

Although Faison was injured, the two cops drove past the Hospital Center in Orange and went to police headquarters, where they took him in through a back stairwell, the indictment said. There he was robbed and pepper-sprayed in the nose and mouth while still handcuffed. He died shortly afterwards.

Within days of Faison's death, 100 people protested in front of Orange police headquarters demanding justice. A week later 300 demonstrated there to renew their demands. Over the last year, public protests in the Faison case have continued, uniting with efforts to win justice in other cases of police brutality in New Jersey.

Protests have also demanded prosecution of the killers of Stanton Crew, a Black man fatally shot by cops on Route 80 on June 2, 1999. In December 1999, a grand jury cleared two state troopers and two local police officers of criminal wrongdoing in the Crew case.

On the June 2 anniversary of the killing of Crew, a car caravan drove from Newark through Orange to Morristown to the home of his family to demand justice in both the Crew and Faison cases.

Lee Oleson is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Jane Harris is a member of the United Transportation Union.