Vol. 80/No. 2 January 18, 2016
(front page)
Chicago actions continue against killings by cops
‘Arrest cops who shot down student, neighbor!’
"You call the police, you try to get help, you lose a loved one," said Janet Cooksey, Quintonio LeGrier's mother. Above, Dec. 27 vigil in Chicago for LeGrier and Bettie Jones, shot and killed by cops the day before. Inset, Cooksey, left, at Dec. 29 action.
AND JOHN HAWKINS
“You call the police, you try to get help and you lose a loved one,” Janet Cooksey, LeGrier’s mother, told a news conference before the vigil. “What are they trained for? Just to kill? I thought that we were supposed to get service and protection. I mean, my son was an honor student. He’s here for Christmas break, and now I’ve lost him.”
LeGrier, who graduated from high school in 2014, was taking electrical engineering classes at Northern Illinois University.
Relatives, neighbors, co-workers, students and local politicians joined the vigil. “This is part of a pattern of excessive police abuse and force,” Rev. Jesse Jackson from Operation PUSH told the crowd. “The bullets went through the house. LeGrier was shot seven times.”
Antonio LeGrier, Quintonio’s father, called 911 to get help when he saw his son acting angry and carrying a baseball bat. He also called Jones, who lived downstairs, and asked her to let the cops in when they arrived. When she did one of them shot and killed both Quintonio and her. The cops say Jones’ killing was an “accident.”
Antonio LeGrier told the Chicago Sun Times that after the killings he saw the police officer standing on the grass 30 feet from the bodies talking to himself. “In my opinion, he knew he had messed up,” LeGrier said. “He knew he had shot blindly, recklessly into the doorway and now two people are dead because of it.”
“There are 20 of Bettie’s co-workers here today. We are supposed to be at work but we felt it was important enough to miss work to come here,” said Shanequa Head, who worked with Jones at Alpha Baking.
“We had to come out to show our support,” said Frank Cosby, newly elected shop steward of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 1 at the factory.
“The morning after Christmas my wife’s aunt, Bettie Jones, was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer,” wrote Jahmal Cole in an online petition calling for the state legislature to ban the grand jury system in cases of police shootings. “We’ve seen nationwide the same repeating story. A police officer uses excessive deadly force with ample video evidence. Prosecutors send the case to a grand jury instead of charging the officer. This grand jury process is postponed months or years to quell public outrage. Ultimately, a grand jury does not indict any officer of wrongdoing.”
“It is important that a fundamental change take place,” said vigil organizer Rev. Marshall Hatch of New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, where one of Bettie Jones’ daughters worships. “We don’t trust IPRA [Independent Police Review Authority], Mayor Emanuel’s police accountability board. And we don’t trust Emanuel, who was part of a police-murder cover-up for 400 days” in the killing of McDonald.
LeGrier’s father filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city the day after the vigil. Emanuel, who had left for a family vacation Dec. 18, cut short the trip and flew back to Chicago Dec. 29.
The mayor appeared at a news conference the next day along with Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante, announcing that the city will purchase 1,400 more Tasers and Chicago cops will receive further training in how to use them, saying it was an alternative to firing their guns.
He backed Escalante’s decision, following the shooting of Jones and LeGrier, to increase to 30 days the amount of paid desk duty cops will be required to take after they shoot someone. The requirement had been three days.
On Dec. 31 Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced that she was requesting FBI participation in the investigation of the killings of LeGrier and Jones. “This is a deeply disturbing incident that demands a very deliberate and meticulous independent investigation,” she said.
That same day more than 200 demonstrators gathered at City Hall. “Tasers kill, Rahm is clueless,” their signs read.
Related articles:
UK gov’t moves to arm more cops, let them ‘shoot to kill’
NJ: ‘The autopsy showed my son’s death was homicide’
Protests demand charges against Paradise cop
Hawa Bah: ‘Join fight against NY police killing of my son’
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