Stop The Cover-Up Of Police Murder In Memphis!

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Stop Police Murder! Prosecute the Cops!

Memphis is a poor, majority black city. That’s why the deaths of at least 23 people killed by Memphis cops in the 18 months between Feb. 2012 and Oct. 2013–the largest number of people killed by cops anywhere in America during this time period–have been deliberately covered up by the local news media, the cops and the politicians. The majority of the people killed by Memphis cops were black. If they had been white, there would be a national uproar. But the deaths of poor black people don’t matter.
What you can do to help:

1. Write to the U.S. Department of Justice in support of our demand that they open a civil rights investigation and prosecute the killer cops.  Make a phone call to the Civil Rights Division, and demand that they stop ignoring the reign of police terror in Memphis. (202)514-4609 (Ask for Jocelyn Samuels, Acting Asst. Atty General. You can also send email to : AskDoj@usdoj.gov, and they will transfer it to the Civil Rights Division.

2. Join our “Million E-Mail March” and send letters of complaint to A.C. Wharton, Mayor of Memphis, Tenn. (mayor@memphistn.gov). Tell him that he has blood on his hands by his repeated failures to rein in his cops, covering up the causes of police murders of civilians, and allowing police brutality a free hand.  

3. Please spread the message about police brutality and murder in Memphis, by contacting news services, human rights organizations, anti-police brutality groups, citizen journalist websites, and many others that you are in contact with. We must break through the cover-up by the cops, local media, and political power structure in Memphis, and expose the awful truth.

Peace and love,

JoNina Ervin, Acting Chair

Memphis Black Autonomy Federation

(901)674-8430

organize.the.hood@gmail.com

Memphis leads nation in use of deadly force by police, activists charge

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San Francisco Bay View:
April 16, 2014

Memphis, Tenn. – The U.S. Justice Department is taking action to curb the use of deadly force by police in Albuquerque, N.M., but deadly force by police in Memphis, Tenn., is the worst in the country, according to a citizens’ watchdog group.

The group, the Memphis Black Autonomy Federation, has asked the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate “a pattern or practice” of misconduct by the Memphis Police Department. Memphis police killed 23 people in 2012 and 2013 – the largest number of people killed by police in this time period in America, the federation maintains.

In Albuquerque, police officers have killed 23 people in the last four years.

Memphis, the poorest big city in America, is a majority Black city. “We can only wonder if this is the reason why federal officials have ignored the excessive use of deadly force by Memphis police,” the federation says.

Memphis police killed 23 people in 2012 and 2013 – the largest number of people killed by police in this time period in America, the federation maintains.

Below is “The Body Count,” a report compiled by the Memphis Black Autonomy Federation listing the 23 people killed by Memphis police in 2012 and 2013.

The Body Count: Victims of Police Terror in Memphis, Tennessee, 2012 and 2013

Compiled by the Memphis Black Autonomy Federation

Police victims in 2012

1. Jeremy McCraven, 20, was shot to death in the back by police on Feb. 10, 2012, while allegedly driving a stolen car.

2. William Howlett, 41, died on March 10, 2012, after becoming “unresponsive” after police chased and arrested him for allegedly attacking his girlfriend.

3. Randy Green died in March, 2012. A family friend said that Green, who was blind, was pepper-sprayed to death by Memphis police officers on the campus of the University of Memphis, where Green was trying to use the library.

4. Dewayne Bailey, 38, was shot to death on May 8, 2012, after falling asleep in his car in a store parking lot. Witnesses disputed the claim by police that when they woke Bailey up, he got out of his car and fought with them, then got back in his car and started driving it.

5. Christian Freeman, 19, was shot to death on June 12, 2012, downtown on Beale Street. Police alleged that Freeman threatened them with a knife. Family members said Freeman had mental health problems and that police knew this because they had arrested him in April for disorderly conduct.

6. Hernandez Dowdy, 36, was shot to death on June 27, 2012. Police say Dowdy, who was Black, was a carjacking suspect whom they chased and that they killed him because they mistakenly thought he had a gun. The owner of the car, a white woman, had filed a false report.

7. Lorenzo Davis, 28, died on July 3, 2012, after police chased and arrested him for allegedly selling drugs. He collapsed after he was in custody. Doctors told his mother that he had severe head injuries, internal bleeding and a broken leg.

8. Delois Epps, 54, died on Aug. 26, 2012, in a car crash caused by a Memphis police officer. Witnesses said the officer was speeding at the time of the crash and did not use the flashing lights and the siren on his car as required by police regulations.

9. Makayla Ross, 13, died in a car crash with her mother, Delois Epps, on Aug. 26, 2012. (See above.) Officer Alex Beard, who caused the crash, was later fired, and in May 2013 was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide.

10. Justin Thompson, 15, was shot to death on Sept. 24, 2012, by off-duty police officer Terrance Shaw, who claimed Thompson tried to rob him. Shaw, who admitted that he knew Thompson prior to killing him, resigned when questioned about his relationship with the boy.

11. Charles Livingston, 32, was shot to death on Dec. 27, 2012. Police claimed they killed Livingston while he was fleeing from a McDonald’s restaurant, which he allegedly robbed, and that he pointed a gun at them while he was escaping. For over 30 years the MPD has been under a U.S. Supreme Court decision forbidding them from shooting “fleeing felons” like Livingston in the back.

Police victims in 2013

12. Donald Moore, 67, was shot to death on Jan. 11, 2013. Police claim that when they came to Moore’s home to serve him with a warrant for animal cruelty, he pointed a gun at them. However, when the cops came busting into the house, they broke down the door in the middle of the night and never announced they were police officers. Then Moore was fatally shot when he went for his firearm on a night stand.

13. Steven Askew, 24, was shot to death on Jan. 17, 2013, after falling asleep in his car waiting for his girlfriend to come home from work. Two police officers, who were called to the area on another matter, claimed that when they approached Askew’s car, he pointed a gun at them and they killed him. Askew was licensed to carry a gun. A video of the incident disputes the police version of events.

14. Horace Whiting, 63, was shot to death on March 10, 2013. Police claim Whiting had a shotgun when they confronted him in front of his house and that he fired at them when they told him to put the gun down. A neighbor of Whiting said Whiting never pointed the gun at anyone, and that he was on his own porch.

15. George Golden, 42, died on April 5, 2013, from injuries he sustained on March 27 after he was shot, kicked and beaten by two police officers in the parking lot of a Walmart store, where police claim Golden was shoplifting. A cell phone video taken by a bystander shows that one cop beat and kicked Golden while he was lying on the ground after being shot by another cop. Police made no reference to the fatal shooting in their final incident report, covering up the cause of death.

16. Daniel Brock, 47, was shot to death on April 10, 2013. Police claim that when they stopped Brock for an alleged incident of “road rage,” they shot him because they thought he had a gun as he was approaching them. Brock’s son said his father had a mental illness and was taking medication for it.

17. Amjustine Hunter, 28, was shot to death in his car on April 23, 2013, at a gas station. At least one witness disputed the police story that after they stopped Hunter for “suspicious” activity, police shot him when he tried to run them over with his car.

18. John Walker died on May 18, 2013, when an off-duty police officer hit the motorcycle Walker was riding while working as a traffic escort for a funeral.

19. Police claim an unidentified man shot himself to death on May 24, 2013, after he allegedly shot at police officers at an apartment complex. To date, no public report has been found verifying the story of the police.

20. Byron Kelley, 32, was shot to death on June 4, 2013, in Olive Branch, Miss., by Memphis police and DEA agents.

21. Johnny Taylor, 33, was shot to death on July 1, 2013. Police said they killed Taylor after he fired at them outside his home.

22. Marvin Amerson allegedly committed suicide on July 23, 2013, according to the MPD, after a standoff with officers following a bank robbery.

23. Aaron Dumas, 32, was killed on Oct. 15, 2013, when tactical officers of the Memphis police department threw tear gas chemicals into the house where they had chased Dumas, causing the house to catch on fire and burning him alive. Several neighbors had their homes damaged by the flames.

Contact the Memphis Black Autonomy Federation at P.O. Box 16382, Memphis, TN 38186-0382, 901-674-8430, organize.the.hood@gmail.com, https://www.facebook.com/BlackAutonomyFederation. JoNina Ervin, acting chair, is responsible for this report.

Welcome to the blog for the Ida B. Wells Coalition

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In early 2013, after a reign of terror by the Memphis (TN) police in the USA (15 killed in a year), and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the Memphis based Black Autonomy Federation, an African-American radical anti-authoritarian organization, called for activists all over the USA and the world to recognize the police crimes in Memphis, and on March 15th and 16th, a protest and march to the city police-court annex took place in downtown Memphis following a rally at city hall. Activists from 10 cities came for this protest and the conference the next day, which formalized the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality. Then mere days later, on March 30, 2013, the IBWC was forced to organize for a mass demonstration against a rally by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was fighting to preserve a racist Confederate park system, which was a tribute to the Klan and Klan leader, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and called for a mass mobilization. 1,500 people came out to the anti-Klan protests, even though the Mayor and Black officials who had collaborated with the Klan and the business establishment had tried to warn them the pubic off and had assembled 450 heavily armed riot police to intimidate us. It didn’t work. An estimated 1,200 people came from Memphis, and 300 activists from the outside.

We created this activist mass movement to build class and race unity, and to challenge the governments of the world who are going over to corporate fascism as their public policies.  Fascist paramilitary movements have also made gains in this period, and the use of police deadly force has been regularized by governmental authorities. Now they are working together, so we must work together.

Thus, we need an activist movement that can fight against mass unemployment, the huge American prison establishment that acts as concentration camps against the poor and POC, to combat police murder of the poor and oppressed racial groups in the streets, and to act as an ally for the Black Autonomy Federation and Black Autonomy International, who founded the movement.

We ask activists, regardless of their race, ideology, or location in the world to join with us and help build the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality into an international mass movement which can beat back fascism and all other forms of oppression in the capitalist system, and be a defense against reactionary movements and increasingly dictatorial governments/police.

Love and struggle,

Lorenzo and JoNina M. Ervin, Acting Chairs

 

 

Every March Ain’t A Protest: More Police CounterInsurgency in Memphis

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Memphis Black Autonomy Federation has talked before about how police counterinsurgency works in the city of Memphis. Yesterday, December 17, 2013, a demonstration against “police operations” took place with a small group of protesters, sponsored by the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center. Although black people were visible in the event, this group itself is white-controlled and works directly with the cops and city hall politicians. For years, they have been the “official protest movement” because they represent no threat to the status quo. In fact, they receive corporate and government grant money and other special privileges from city officials to mislead the masses of people.

Yesterday’s so-called “people’s protest against police operations”  is no different. While black people in Memphis are subjected to daily “stop and frisk” and other brutal police harassment, not to mention there have been 23 civilians killed by the police since February 2012, the majority of whom were black. That did not concern these people. In fact, not one word was uttered about this campaign of police murder and all the lives that were lost. Instead,  it was about middle class concerns over the way the police “does its business”. See, this group thinks of itself as part of the police department and the governmental structure, designed to “keep the peace.” That is one reason why we call them the “Peace Police.”

Shamefully, their bogus “united front” called Memphis United, which was earlier discredited by working with the cops, the Mayor’s office and the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the March 30, 2013 anti-Klan demonstration, resurfaced to “lead” this bogus event. These are the same people who when the Klan came to town, hid out themselves at an “alternate event”, denounced the very idea of protesting the fascists, and characterized protesters as “troublemakers”. They encouraged people to come to their location, rather than the downtown protest. Back then, they even worked with the cops on their security plan to hold back demonstrators and put us in a “protest pen.” When word of this leaked out, they went out of existence in disgrace. We must never forget this treachery, and somehow believe that yesterday’s “protest” was real, rather than play-acting or lobbying for more privileges for their middle class coalition.

This is the kind of counterinsurgency you have in this period, where bogus middle class front groups working with the cops and the political establishment try to undermine real grassroots protest movements of families who worked with Black Autonomy, whose husbands, sons and children were murdered by cops, This scam protest could not take place without the added connivance of the white corporate media, who fawn after the every move of this white-led campaign. The truth is they are not confronting the police about the body count of civilians they have killed. They are talking about the “restrictions” on their rights. Of course, we do not want activists to be arrested for videotaping police, but that is not more important than people losing their lives because of excessive use of force by Memphis cops, and the police state they have created in black poor and working class communities.

This all started on October 25, 2013, when the cops harassed and arrested people who were filming the cops during a hip hop event downtown. Black Autonomy members were part of the attendees at the public event to protest the harassment, and we proposed a protest campaign at that time, rather than negotiations, filing a police internal affairs complaint, or begging for an apology from the cops who had hassled them. When we presented this, we were rejected and pushed out of the coalition at the time by a flunky of the Memphis Peace and Justice Center coalition, who said that we “threatened his authority.” Now, it appears that they have found out what we were saying was true, and are trying to adopt some of the ideas we raised in our proposal, but do it in an underhanded way.  Yet, they still refuse to confront the cops over all the fatal police shootings in Memphis, which leads the entire country. So, this event was about their middle class privileges to video police, not that of fighting police brutality or defending the rights of poor and working people in the black community.

It is important for radical activists to understand how this works in this period where left-liberals are used by the cops, so that activists and community organizers can know what is real and what is bogus, who are their enemies and who are their friends, and how the government and corporations can and do finance their own oppositional movement with nonprofit organizations who accept corporate/government grants. You also need to understand how this works so that you can see that this is not a real protest movement,. It is instead a game of deception to keep those forces in power who have traditionally been there: the capitalist class and their corrupt politicians. So every march is not a genuine protest. Some are political theatrics.

NO SELLOUT, STOP SNITCHING! STOP POLICE MURDER, PROSECUTE THE COPS!

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Acting Vice Chair

Memphis Black Autonomy Federation.

organize.the.hood@gmail.com

(Link below  to Commercial Appeal article about Tuesday’s march.)

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/dec/17/activists-march-to-memphis-city-hall-with-list/