Vol. 81/No. 28      July 31, 2017

 

Protest demands answers in cop killing of Justine Damond

 
“My mom is dead because a police officer shot her for reasons I don’t know and I demand answers,” Zach Damond, 22, told a vigil of over 300 people held after his stepmother Justine Damond was shot and killed by Minneapolis cop Mohamed Noor July 15.

Damond had called 911 to report a possible assault in an alley behind her home in southwest Minneapolis. When Noor and his partner Matthew Harrity arrived, she walked up to their car and began talking to Harrity, who was the driver. “Suddenly a surprise burst of gunfire blasted past Harrity as Noor fired though the squad’s open window striking Damond in the abdomen,” the Minneapolis-area Star Tribune reported.

Neither Noor nor Harrity had their bodycam turned on during the killing. They have been suspended with pay during an investigation of the shooting by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

The Star Tribune reported July 19 that Harrity told investigators he was startled by a “loud sound” as Damond approached the car. Noor, a Somali-American police officer, has refused to be questioned.

The killing happened just weeks after the June 16 acquittal of police officer Jeronimo Yanez, who shot and killed Philando Castile in July 2016.

Damond, who is Caucasian, was a yoga instructor who moved to Minneapolis from Sydney. Her killing has been widely covered in Australia and internationally.

Don Damond, her fiancé, told the press that “her family and I have been provided with almost no information from law enforcement regarding what happened after police arrived.”

“The tragic shooting death of Justine Damond will bring home for many Australians a disturbing phenomenon they had only observed from afar and may have even thought was on the decline,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported, “the extraordinary rate of people killed during encounters with police in the United States.”

“Workers throughout Minneapolis and the world are outraged by the police killing of Justine Damond,” David Rosenfeld, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, said in a statement released July 18. Campaign supporters have been distributing it as they discuss the killing and working-class politics throughout the area. “The fight against police killings is a working-class issue and a union issue. This incident reveals once again the true purpose of the police. They are used to keep us in our place.”

The SWP calls for the cops involved, and any who try and cover up the killing, to be indicted, prosecuted and jailed.

“The fight against police brutality is part of a bigger fight to unify the working class and act in solidarity with all who are exploited and oppressed,” Rosenfeld said. “It is along this road that we will build a movement that can overthrow the rule of capital and bring workers to power.”

“The killing was unjustified,” truck driver Randy Saylor told Tony Lane when the SWP campaigner knocked on his door. “This woman was trying to do a good deed.”  
 
 
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