Vol. 79/No. 16      May 4, 2015

Unlike at previous protests, this year police blocked the station with barricades, fencing and patrol cars. They refused to let family members and protesters leave crosses on the front step with names and death dates of Lazo and others killed in police custody. Police on the station’s roof and sidewalk, as well as plainclothes cops in cars across the street, videotaped the 100 participants.

Lazo, 24, was beaten with flashlights by cops who pulled over his car on April 12, 2008. The cops admit pummeling him but claim he tried to grab an officer’s gun while resisting arrest on alleged drug charges. Instead of taking him for medical care, police brought him to the third precinct, where he collapsed of heart failure.

The Suffolk County medical examiner ruled Lazo’s death a homicide, saying he suffered “sudden cardiac death following exertion associated with prolonged physical altercation with multiple blunt impacts.” Neither this finding nor photos of Lazo’s bruised and bloodied face and body were given to the grand jury, family attorney Frederick Brewington told the Militant at the protest. No indictments were handed down.

A federal civil suit is set for trial in July against county officials, the police department, and officers John Newton, James Scimone, William Judge, Christopher Talt and Joseph Link. Lazo’s partner Jennifer Gonzalez and his mother Patricia Gonzalez are demanding $55 million in damages.

Family members say Lazo was stopped for going eight miles over the speed limit. “What we know for sure,” says their fact sheet, “is that Kenny was handcuffed, forced down on the ground, beaten and choked with flashlights. “

Unlike the recent shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, S.C., Patricia Gonzalez told the Militant, there were no witnesses to the cop beating of her son. “If it hadn’t been caught on videotape, the killing would have been swept under the carpet, like the truth about Kenny was,” she said.

Posters at the vigil displayed drawings, names and death dates of a number of those killed in police custody in the area, including Latinos such as Lazo, who was Puerto Rican, as well as Blacks and Caucasians. “It’s not about race with us,” Gonzalez said. “It sometimes is with them [the cops]. But for us it’s about police brutality. It’s about uniting all those who want to make a change.

The Militant also spoke with Cathy Artura, whose brother Daniel McDonnell was killed by Suffolk County cops in May 2011. He had been arrested in his yard over a dispute with a neighbor. “He was white and Irish,” Artura said. “It happens to all of us.”

After taking him to jail, Suffolk County cops denied McDonnell his bipolar medication and then used a Taser and beat him, as he lay naked on the wet floor of his cell, Long Island’s Newsday reported. His family recently settled a civil suit for $2.2 million and are asking the state attorney general to open a criminal investigation.
 
 
Related articles:
Baltimore: ‘Protest death of Freddie Gray in police custody!’
 
 
 
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