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Vol. 79/No. 13      April 13, 2015

 
(front page)
Protests demand charges against
Philadelphia cops in killing

 
BY JANET POST  
PHILADELPHIA — “This is a civil rights issue. Our civil rights are being violated in this country. It is not OK that the police get to judge you, jury you, sentence you, execute you,” Tanya Brown-Dickerson, the mother of Brandon Tate-Brown, told the Militant. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced March 19 that he would not bring criminal charges against the two cops involved in the Dec. 15, 2014, killing of 26-year-old Tate-Brown. Police officials refuse to release the names of the cops, but say they have returned to street duty.

Tate-Brown was shot in the back of the head. Police say the cops pulled him over because his car’s headlights were off. They say he had a gun in the car and ordered him to get out. When he complied, cops say a struggle ensued and he was killed as he reached for the gun.

After attempting for weeks to get videotapes of the shooting from the cops and the names of the officers involved, Brown-Dickerson and her lawyer were allowed to view one at the Internal Affairs Division headquarters. They both say that the videotape contradicts the cops’ story. It shows that the car’s lights were on and Tate-Brown was behind the car after trying to run from a police beating when he was killed, not at the window trying to reach in for a gun.

“They beat up my son bad,” Brown-Dickerson told a protest rally at the site of the shooting Dec. 28. When the photos are finally released, “I’m telling you it’s going to prove that my son was the one that suffered hard. It’s got to stop. Police brutality has got to stop.”

The police never told Brown-Dickerson that her son had been killed.

The Department of Justice released a report March 23 saying Philadelphia cops opened fire on people more than 390 times between 2007 and 2014 — roughly once a week. In 59 cases, the report says, those shot were unarmed. Most shootings involved Black suspects.

In euphemistic language, the report calls the problem “threat perception failure.” That is “when the officer(s) perceives a suspect as being armed due to the misidentification of a nonthreatening object (e.g., a cell phone) or movement (e.g., tugging at the waistband).”

Philadelphia cops have been involved in 26 shooting incidents so far this year.

“Am I releasing the names? No,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told the Philadelphia Daily News Feb. 19. “Everybody needs to be mindful of the fact that this has gotten to the point where we had two officers shot and killed in New York by someone who wanted to use the controversies as an excuse to commit murder.”

Brown-Dickerson has joined actions called by relatives of others killed by the cops, including a Feb. 28 rally in Bridgeton, New Jersey, protesting the Dec. 30 cop killing of Jerame Reid.

Even before her own son’s death, she attended events protesting the cop killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. “As much as I will fight for justice for Brandon, I will also fight for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and others who have been killed,” she said.

“Justice has not been done yet,” Terrell Tate, the father of Tate-Brown, said in a video released to the public, “because the police that shot him and beat him have not yet been tried and held accountable.”

The night Williams announced he would not file charges, he and Ramsey attended a neighborhood community meeting. Members of the Racial, Economic And Legal Justice Coalition approached the table where Ramsey and Williams sat and shouted in their faces.

“As police officers tried to prevent them from pressing further,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “the protesters started shoving the police; some people tumbled to the floor, and folding chairs were sent sliding across the auditorium.” Ten demonstrators were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

“Any protesters who speak to these public servants disrespectfully are urged to behave with dignity,” Brown-Dickerson said in a public statement. Actions like these weaken the fight against police brutality, she said. Those “who want to protest her son’s death” should “do so peacefully and act respectfully toward all public officials and police officers.”
 
 
Related articles:
London meeting debates cop ‘stop and search’
 
 
 
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