The majority of the demonstrators came on a chartered bus from the Washington Heights neighborhood in New York City, where Villanueva lived. Among them was Homero Palacio, who said, "Every time the cops commit a racist crime the community has to respond." He noted that while the cops were assaulting Villanueva "everyone was explaining he had epilepsy. It’s the same word in English and Spanish."

On April 16 Villanueva suffered an epileptic seizure while working at the Quick Cut garment plant in Bloomfield. The police arrived before the paramedics. According to co-workers and the factory owner, who saw what happened, the four cops insisted Villanueva was on drugs, threw him to the floor face down, handcuffed him, and jammed their knees into his head, neck, and back.

They kept Villanueva handcuffed when he was put in an ambulance. He was dead within half an hour. An autopsy found the cause of death to be "mechanical asphyxia"--that is physical pressure that stopped him from breathing.

"I need to see these people indicted," said Lisaann Villanueva, Santiago’s wife, in an interview. "There’s no room for police officers like this. They need to be taken off duty before they hurt someone else." She added, "How could this happen at a man’s place of work?" and noted it would likely not have happened if he wasn’t Black.  
 
A musician and teacher
Villanueva, 35, was known by many in Washington Heights as a musician and volunteer teacher of Dominican folk dancing. More than 100 people rallied at a public school in New York April 23 to plan the protest in Bloomfield. Among them were Margarita Rosario and Iris Baez, both longtime fighters against police brutality whose sons were killed by the New York cops in the mid-1990s. Villanueva "was treated like a criminal like my son was treated like a criminal" by the police, Rosario told the crowd.

Maurice Williams, the Socialist Workers Party’s candidate for mayor in Newark, New Jersey, attended the rally and expressed his support for the fight. "We need to demand that the killer cops be jailed," he said, to applause and chants.

The April 25 picket at the Bloomfield municipal building was lively and loud, despite a steady rain. Juanita Young from New York City said, "My son was killed by the police on March 1, 2000. He was shot point blank in the head.

The medical examiner ruled that his death was homicide. He was killed less than a week after the New York cops were acquitted for killing Amadou Diallo." Ferguson, a 23-year-old Black man, had been charged with resisting arrest the previous week at a protest of the acquittals of the four cops who gunned down Diallo.

Young said she came to the protest in Bloomfield because "they are killing all these young men or putting them in prison. They say things are getting better but they are not, they are getting worse. There have been five killings by the cops in the past six months. The police have been harassing my family because I go to these protests." She said a week or so ago the cops came to her home with the wallet of her dead son.  
 
Other police brutality cases
Nabeelah Abdul-Ghafur, who is active in the North End Coalition, a community group in Bloomfield, was among the first to arrive for the protest. She said residents in the Black community have been seeking justice in another case, where police officer Joseph Krantz injured five children while supposedly shooting at a dog. This happened in 1999, and "he didn’t miss a pay check. There’s a lot of complaints against the cops in Bloomfield, but we can’t get access to the records," she said.

Claudio Garcia, a Dominican youth who is in a work training program, said he’d been to other protests against police brutality but this was the first one in New Jersey. "The police figured they were the bosses in the situation. He [Villanueva] was sick and they started arresting him. The cops think they rule the world."

Several Black ministers held a news conference in Bloomfield April 26, where they called for a thorough investigation into Villanueva’s death, and said the cops should have better medical training. In response, Bloomfield Police Chief Jack McNiff defended the actions of the officers and assured reporters that two of the cops involved were trained as emergency medical technicians.

Meanwhile, the protests are continuing. More than 100 people joined in celebrating Villanueva’s life and protesting his death in Washington Heights April 28. Several musicians who had played with him in various bands provided music, including a song in Spanish with the refrain, "Yes, it was the cops who killed him."

Nina Paulino, who had known Villanueva since he moved to New York from the Dominican Republic nine years ago, spoke briefly about the fight. She said that the Bloomfield authorities have thus far refused to release his body so that it can be flown to his native land for a proper burial. She urged everyone to come to Bloomfield for another protest at the municipal building the following week.  
 
 
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