Dozens of neighborhood residents and others held a protest that day at the 79th Precinct police station nearby, demanding the cop who pulled the trigger be brought to justice. “This could have been any of us,” said Michael Ledbetter, one of the demonstrators. “Everybody should come out for this.” During the march he bought a megaphone and walked around the neighborhood chanting, “911—call for murder,” referring to the police emergency number. Ledbetter said he did this because he wanted everyone to know that “this is about racial profiling. We don’t want Timothy’s death to be in vain. Something has got to change.”

City officials took immediate steps to try to head off an explosion in the community. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others from his administration visited Stansbury’s family that afternoon, passing through a gauntlet of furious residents shouting, “It’s not the first time, Mr. Mayor!” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a press conference that afternoon that the shooting appeared to be unjustified and promised to review how cops patrol housing projects.

A hand-lettered sign was posted on a fence outside the building where the young man was killed, saying, “Innocent Black man killed by racist NYPD.” A memorial with votive candles and bouquets of flowers was in place on the spot Stansbury collapsed Saturday night, and has attracted those outraged by the police killing.

The killing took place atop a row of four-story buildings that share a single roof, part of the Louis Armstrong Houses on Lexington Ave. Stansbury was attending a birthday party for a teenage neighbor Friday night, when he and a friend, Terrence Fisher, also 19, left the party to get more music. They crossed the roof, picked up the CDs and another friend in the building, and again climbed the stairs to the roof to return to the party. At that time, two cops were patrolling the roof in the dark with their guns drawn.

According to press reports, Stansbury was walking up the stairs ahead of his two friends and one of the officers opened the door, apparently at the same time Stansbury grabbed the door handle. As the door swung open, one of the uniformed cops fired a single shot from his Glock 9-mm semiautomatic handgun, striking Stansbury in the chest. The youth staggered down the steps and collapsed on the ground floor. An ambulance took him to Woodhull Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 2:40 a.m.

“Mommy, I saw them shoot him for no reason,” Terrence Fisher explained to his mother, Jewel Austin. Family members, friends, and neighbors of Stansbury described the shooting as an act of wanton recklessness by officers who had asked no questions, didn’t identify themselves, and fired without warning.

“Why would a trained police officer just shoot a young boy who’s not even armed?” asked Timothy Stansbury Sr., the victim’s father. He spoke to his son’s two companions shortly after the killing and said the officer “didn’t ask no questions, didn’t say freeze, didn’t say hold it, didn’t say stop, and just shot my son, just like that.”

Elizabeth Decambre, who lives on the first floor of the building where Stansbury collapsed, said the two cops stood over the teen while neighbors screamed for them to help. “The kid was lying there looking up at us,” she said. “He was reaching up with one arm.”

Given the widespread outrage by area residents, city officials acted swiftly to suspend Neri in order to head off the kind of mass protests that have taken place in the past around other incidents of police brutality and racism in recent years, like the shooting of Amadou Diallo, Malcolm Ferguson, and Patrick Dorismond, to name just three.

Those actions involved thousands of opponents of police brutality. Neri’s case is expected to go before a grand jury by the end of January.

The city’s attempts to stop protests of this latest police killing by the police did not dampen the efforts by residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant who organized the protest march from the Armstrong Houses to the 79th Precinct police station. At the same time about 20 people kept vigil outside the apartment building where Stansbury was killed Sunday. The protesters signed homemade signs that were then placed with the candles and flowers at the memorial. Another demonstration has been called for Saturday, January 31 (see details in calendar section of themilitant.com).  
 
 
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