N.Y. cops shoot another young Black in the back  

BY ROSE ANA BERBEO
NEW YORK - Less than two days before a planned demonstration against police brutality and racism, New York City cops killed 16-year-old Kevin Cedeno, shooting him in the back at 3 a.m. April 6 as he was running down the street. The police claimed that Cedeno, who is Black, was holding a 22-inch machete and the officer who killed him, Anthony Pellegrini, feared for his life. The next day the daily newspapers featured large photos of the machete that cops said they had found at Cedeno's side.

The day of the shooting, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani immediately defended the cops, saying, "If you come at police officers in a situation where they're taking police action, and you continue to come at them, they have to protect themselves and to protect anybody else in the neighborhood."

The mayor retreated at a news conference the next day, after autopsy results confirmed that Cedeno had been shot in the back. "There's no possible way to judge this event without knowing all of the facts," he said.

Kevin's mother, Roma Cedeno, said she was at her job in Baltimore when she learned that her son had been shot. "My daughter and his girlfriend were right there, not eight feet away from him," she told the Militant. "They just heard a shot. The cop was walking up behind him and didn't say anything before he shot him." Cedeno's girlfriend, Thomasina Jeffrey, who is the mother of their infant child, told reporters outside the police station, "He was running and running. I told him, `Kevin, stop running.' Then the cop shot him. I didn't see a machete or a knife."

Dozens of people protested outside the 33rd Precinct Station House during the day after the shooting, until cops invited them inside for a two-hour "question-and-answer" session. Residents of the Washington Heights area, a working- class neighborhood that is mostly Latino and Black, gathered in small crowds on the streets and denounced the cops for the killing. A number of people said they saw the cops step on Cedeno's back and handcuff him after he was shot and questioned why the victim was not taken to the closest hospital.

A woman who identified herself as the mother of Damin Samson, one of Cedeno's friends, said, "How could they take the cop for trauma to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital three blocks away and let Kevin bleed to death while they take him to Harlem Hospital, which is 18 blocks away? They wanted that boy to die."

Luis Alvarez, who was discussing the killing with a number of people a block from the shooting site, told a Militant reporter, "It's not true that he was holding a machete." Alvarez said he was coming home from work when he saw the group of youths that Cedeno was with when he was shot.

Cedeno is the fourth person in two months the cops have shot and killed for supposedly threatening the police with a knife. The other three were José Sánchez, Donald Davidson, and Deonaime Matan.

At the Racial Justice Day demonstration in front of City Hall on April 7, Iris Báez, whose son Anthony was killed by the cops in 1994, said, "Now we have another boy dead, a 16- year-old. No more killing. This killing of youths has to stop." Báez is an activist with Mothers Against Police Brutality, a group whose members have participated in numerous speak-outs against police brutality in New York.

On April 8, the family of Kevin Cedeno held a news conference in front of the family's apartment building on 159th St. Hundreds of community residents gathered around to show support for the family and demand justice. Some held up homemade signs and pictures of Kevin and other victims of police killings.

"My son didn't deserve to die like that," said Kevin's mother, Roma Cedeno. She said the family had moved to the United States from Trinidad to "make a better life. But here our people live in a community where we are disrespected," she said. "Where it's okay to shoot us in the back one, two, three, or four times, as many times as it takes to kill us."

A lawyer for the family, Michael Hardy, said, "Normally a person who shoots someone in the back should be arrested and prosecuted for murder. That's what we're calling for."

Barbara Petillo, said she came to show support for the family. "I have a 19-year-old son," she said. "And every time he goes out, I don't know whether the drug dealers will get him or the cops. The cops have a license to kill. They have no right to touch our kids."

Another community resident who declined to give her name, said she thought people needed to teach their kids to have more respect for the police to avoid these kinds of problems.

But Petillo said, "I don't care what they say he was doing, they had no right to shoot him in the back."

Amy Husk contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home