BY DICK McALESTER
DES MOINES, Iowa - Policeman Tim Blum shot and killed Kimberly Frazier, a 29-year-old Santee Sioux Indian, on the porch of her Sioux City, Iowa, home March 1. The shooting has drawn outrage from Native Americans in this part of the country.

More than 300 Native Americans from Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and South Dakota, along with their supporters, marched through downtown Sioux City in mid-April protesting Frazier's killing.

Vernon Bellecourt, a leader of the American Indian Movement from Minneapolis, said at the protest, "within 28 seconds, a marksman targets the heart of Kim Frazier and she's a victim of Sioux City's death squads masquerading as police officers."

The cops claimed they were responding to a disturbance at Frazier's home after a report of a kidnapping and that she lunged at them with a knife. Police prevented a nurse who sought to give aid to Frazier after the shooting from reaching her.

The police department, the county attorney's office, and the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Affairs all released whitewash reports clearing the police of any wrong doing.

Lousia Frazier told the media her daughter was holding a knife above her head and never made a move toward any of the 10 cops that surrounded their house. "There were cops all over with guns drawn and Kim was saying, 'leave me alone, I didn't do anything.'

"The police report is nothing more than a blatant attempt to further vilify my daughter," she said. "And justify the poor judgment and indiscriminate use of deadly force that led to her death."

"There are six unsolved cases involving the death of Indians in Sioux City," protest leader Ron Thomas said in a phone interview. Thomas is a vice-chairman of the Santee Tribe of Nebraska. He recalled the stabbing death of his brother, Anthony Thomas, in 1991. "The police let him lie there until he died.

"The American Indian Movement wants to bring national attention of the shooting of Kimberly Frazier and shed light on how the police, the media, and the city officials dragged her name through the mud to justify the killing," Thomas emphasized.

Native American activists have held weekly vigils at Sioux City's War Eagle Monument to protest the killing of Kim Frazier.  
 
 
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