Vol. 79/No. 3 February 2, 2015
BY MIKE FITZSIMMONS
HOUSTON — Some 100 people demonstrated in front of the Harris County courthouse Dec. 29, protesting the decision of a grand jury not to indict Houston cop Juventino Castro for killing Jordan Baker in January 2014. “Please stay with me,” Janet Baker, Jordan’s mother, told the crowd, pledging to continue the fight to hold the cop accountable. “It’s going to be an uphill battle.”
Jordan Baker, a 26-year-old African-American, was shot in a strip mall near his home by Castro, who was working a second job as a security guard. Police claim Castro saw Baker in the parking lot and decided to stop him. A fight ensued and after starting to run away, the cops say Baker turned around, reached into his waistband and charged at Castro. Baker did not have a weapon.
The killing and grand jury decision have attracted widespread interest here in the wake of protests across the country following police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York. Janet Baker spent days at the courthouse waiting for a verdict, accompanied by relatives of other victims of local shootings.
In the past decade, Harris County grand juries have cleared more than 300 Houston-area cops involved in shootings; every single one since 2004 has been let off.
“It’s hard to say we don’t have a problem with numbers like that,” Carmen Roe, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, told the Houston Chronicle Jan. 5.
“It could be any one of us. Police shouldn’t be killing people,” Felita Vaughn, a participant in the protest on the courthouse steps, told the Militant.
“Last the summer I was walking down the street and cops stopped me for no reason and asked me what I was doing. I said, ‘going to pay rent,’” Demarcus Anthony, 19, said, adding he had never come to a protest before. “They looked at my record and saw a warrant because I had a ticket at school for attendance in the 9th grade. I spent a day in jail.”
Related articles:
‘We have to speak out against police brutality’
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