Justice for Kimani Gray! By Fight Back! Editors | March 17, 2013
We stand with Carol Gray, the mother of Kimani Gray, in demanding his murderers be taken off the streets of New York City before they take another young life. Police who murder need to be punished. A few weeks suspension is not enough. The murderers of Kimani Gray need to go to prison.
Repeated protests against this latest police killing of an unarmed African American 16-year-old gained international attention. Each day saw more people join the protests and they grew more militant. Police repression was met with growing resistance. People in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, like African Americans across the country, are fed up with police repression and violence. The militant response shows people are not going to take it anymore. The racist killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida lit a flame and now the response to the police murder of Kimani Gray shows the fire of justice is spreading.
In response to protests, the New York Police Department (NYPD) declared a portion of East Flatbush in Brooklyn a ‘Frozen Zone.’ This means media are not allowed in and people can be subjected to arrest for not following police orders. It is mini-martial law. The last times the NYPD declared a Frozen Zone was on the 10th anniversary of 911 and during the beginning of Occupy Wall Street. Fight Back! stands in solidarity with the protesters against this repression, especially those arrested. The NYPD needs to back off.
The murder of Kimani Gray at the hands of the NYPD is part of the criminalization of African-American, Chicano and other oppressed people in the U.S. Gray was only 16 years old with a whole future ahead of him. However, because he was African American, he was deemed a potential threat by the NYPD. Gray was eliminated because of who he was, not anything he did.
In this country, police repression of African Americans is all too common. The history of oppression of African-Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow segregation, have created an African American nation in and around the Black Belt territory of the South. This history of national oppression enforced by terror at the hands of slavemasters and the Ku Klux Klan leaves a legacy of racist vigilante and police violence against African Americans, even in places with African American mayors and police chiefs.
The tiny elite that rules the U.S. fears the power of African Americans and other oppressed peoples. They fear the threat to their continued rule. The goal of the billionaires and multi-millionaires, those who control the politicians and government, is to keep African Americans ‘in their place,’ unable to progress economically or socially as a people. They attempt to keep young men fearful of stepping out of line. They try to promote negativity, self-hatred and weakness. It shifts the focus off of a corrupt and violent system.
In New York, for example, the NYPD ‘stop and frisk’ policy terrorizes African-Americans and Latinos. Stop and frisk creates the conditions and the mindset for police to shoot unarmed youth like Kimani Gray, to shoot first and deny afterward. Then the NYPD works overtime covering for the killer cops involved. Politicians hem and haw, or even worse, justify, the killing of a child. The corporate press demonizes the victim and publishes police records produced by stop and frisk policies.
Besides police killings, the other twin tower is the school to prison pipeline that locks up African American, Chicano and other oppressed youth in much greater numbers than whites. This conscious targeting is a major form of national oppression today and promoted or condoned by politicians of both political parties. The prison industry is big business and, due to both privatization and the exploitation of prison labor, profits are growing. The justice system is rampantly racist in terms of who the police target, the composition of juries, the background and prejudices of judges and prosecutors, resources of public defenders, the categorization and severity of sentencing laws and the administration of prisons. The system is corrupt from bottom to top and needs to be abolished.
We praise Carol Gray for speaking out and the witnesses who bravely came forward to tell the truth. Due to strong families and communities who protest, we know the names of young African-American men and women like Kimani Gray, Reika Boyd, Trayvon Martin, and Sean Bell - killed by police and vigilantes. But there are countless others. Only through building a strong movement can we win freedom in our lifetime.
It is time for people in this country to rise up and stop the murder of African American young men by killer police. We need to combat racism in all forms that continue to oppress our communities and murder our children.
Update: Officer Who Killed 16-Year-Old Kimani Gray Declines ‘Cop Of The Year’ Award Due to Community Pressure May 11, 2014
In 2013, 16-year-old Kimani Gray was killed when two plainclothes New York Police officers shot him seven times. Police claimed Gray had a gun, though witnesses disagreed with the officers’ story.
The two police involved in the shooting, Sgt. Mourad Mourad and Officer Jovaniel Cordova, have not faced any charges as a result of the shooting. One has, however, stayed on his department’s radar: Mourad was originally named to receive “Cop of the Year” this Thursday by the NYPD Muslim Officers Society. But due to community pressure, Mourad refused the award and did not attend the ceremony.
A spokesperson for the Muslim Officers Society could not immediately be reached for comment.
“He’s done a lot of work taking down criminals and taking a lot of guns and drugs off the street,” Lt. Adeel Rana told the New York Daily News on why he was originally chosen for the award. Mourad had also been honored by the department in 2011 with an award for outstanding police work.
Gray’s family and their supporters were outraged by the group’s choice. “It’s an insult to the family and the community,” Former city council member Charles Barron, one of the Grays’ closest allies, told New York’s Amsterdam News. “There has been a pattern in the Police Department to reward cops who killed our Black youth.”
In a letter calling for the NYPD Muslim Officers Society to rescind their decision, organizers with the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition wrote, “we find it unconscionable that he would be considered for an award. the Muslim community is a community that stands up for the civil rights of others and is sensitive to the plight of marginalized communities who suffer the abuses of the NYPD.”
Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York Linda Sarsour said the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition contacted both the Muslim Officers Society and Sgt. Mourad himself in protest of the award. “We have worked too long and too hard to build bridges between us and other communities in New York City who are impacted by NYPD abusive policies,” Sarsour said in an email, “and we’re not going to allow the Society to destroy these coalitions.” Sgt. Mourad sent an official letter of declination that was read aloud at Thursday’s award ceremony.
Mourad has been on the force in both Staten Island and Brooklyn for nine years. In the aftermath of the shooting, the New York Daily News discovered he’d been named in three other civil rights lawsuits against the force. The allegations in the lawsuits include wrongful arrests, illegal stops, and the unnecessary use of force. In total, the lawsuits have cost the department $215,000 in settlements.
Mourad was briefly put on administrative duties after the shooting while the NYPD performed an internal investigation. He has not faced any charges, and Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson has yet to decide whether his office will move forward with the case. The Gray family has taken action by filing their own lawsuit against Mourad, Cordova and the NYPD this April.
The day after Mourad was supposed to receive the award, and two days before Mothers Day, Carol Gray and the mothers of others killed by the NYPD rallied in New York to honor their children and protest police brutality. Protesters were specifically calling for a federal investigation into the death of Ramarley Graham, 18, who was killed two years ago when a cop chased him into his home.
“We have many, many victims that have fallen in the hands of those that were supposed to protect and serve,” said Kadiatou Diallo, whose son Amadou was killed by New York cops in 1999. “Please, let the Justice Department hear our voices. Mother’s Day is coming.”
Wednesday, July 2nd 2014 at 8:47PM
Siebra Muhammad
