After a rally at the New Hope Baptist Church the protesters took over all four lanes of a major street while marching to the site where Roberts was killed several blocks away. One Black youth wore a sign with a bull's-eye on it and the words: "This is how the police look at me." Marcus Golden, another protester, told this reporter the police "keep overstepping their bounds. The other day they were harassing some young Blacks and when I tried to help they wouldn't give me their badge numbers. They're getting worse." Drivers stuck in traffic waved and honked their horns in support.

Aaron Roberts, a Black resident of the city's Central District, was killed May 31. Police claim they stopped Roberts because he was driving erratically, citing his backing out into traffic from the Collins Gold Exchange where he had stopped to buy cigarettes. They say Roberts grabbed and held officer Greg Neubert's arm and drove forward and then backwards. Officer Craig Price managed to get into the passenger side of the car, the cops claim, where he shot Roberts to save his partner.

At another protest meeting of about 200 at the New Hope Baptist Church June 9 several Black residents of the Central District said that Neubert and Price are regulars in their area and have a reputation of harassing and brutalizing Blacks. Neubert had earlier arrested Roberts in January 2000.

As to the claim that Roberts was driving erratically, a number of people explained that the cops know the only way to drive out of the small parking spaces in front of the Collins Gold Exchange is to back out into traffic. Julius Collins, the owner of the store, also said this was the usual way his customers leave the parking lot. Many people, including in letters to the editor published in one local paper, have also questioned how Roberts could hold onto the cop while steering and shifting gears.

The local press has come to the defense of the police and presented the cops' version of events as fact. An article by Black columnist Robert Jamieson Jr. titled, "Don't Cry Wolf in Police Shooting," is particularly despised by many calling for justice for Roberts. Jamieson said of Roberts: "He did not die because he was racially profiled, or because the two white officers he crossed paths with last week had a racist agenda. The 37-year-old Seattle man died at the hands of police for actions that any reasonable person would call ill-advised: Confronted by police for a legitimate cause--driving in a wild fashion--Roberts used his Cadillac as a weapon."

An article in the June 6 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, however, reported that in 1996 Neubert had accused another Black man of having used a car to try to run him down. The cop testified that the driver went over a planting strip between the street and the sidewalk in an attempt to hit him. At the trial the defense lawyer for the accused brought in a city arborist who showed that this could not have happened since there were trees in the strip. The charges were dropped after Neubert's lie was exposed but he was never charged with perjury.

In 1995 Neubert shot an unarmed person he said was a suspected drug dealer. The cop said the man had a cigarette lighter in his hand that he mistook for a gun. An internal police review and inquest found this shooting justified.

At least five protests and community meetings have been held in the nine days since Roberts was killed. Another meeting is planned at the First AME Fellowship Hall sponsored by the NAACP.

A year ago there were a number of other protests in Seattle's Black community against the cop killing of David Walker, a mentally ill Black man. A large group of police were following Walker as he skipped down the street holding a knife. The cops claimed they had to shoot Walker because he made a move towards them. A news video of the killing did not show this.

Since 1980, 33 people have been gunned down by Seattle police, some 42 percent of whom were Black, many from the Central District. This is in a city with a less than 10 percent Black population. Since 1996 the cops have killed eight people, five of whom were Black.

Ernest Mailhot is a meat packer and member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 81.
 
 
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