Police Killings Inaugurate New Year : NOLA Indymedia

Several young black men were killed across the nation in police shootings around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The shootings include two incidents of especially questionable police conduct.

In once case, a New Orleans man visiting his family on New Year’s eve was shot 14 times. Twelve bullets struck him from behind. In another case, transit police in Oakland, California detained and shot an apparently cooperative young man in the back in front of dozens of horrified train riders.

Both of these killings occur alongside a string of other questionable incidents in which the police have used deadly force in recent days, include a pair of shootings in Plymouth, Massachusetts (http://www.enterprisenews.com/news/x1060499363/Mom-of-Plymouth-teen-shot-dead-by-cops-sues) and Houston, Texas (http://www.afro.com/tabid/456/itemid/2576/Outrage-over-Racial-Profiling-Police-Shooting-i.aspx). All victims were young black men.

Adolph Grimes III, a native New Orleanian living in Houston had come back to the city for the New Year’s holiday. According to the Times-Picayune:

“Grimes, the father of an 18-month-old boy, returned to his grandmother's house in the 6th Ward at about 2 a.m., his family said. He took a long bath. Shortly before 3 a.m., they said, he went outside to wait in his car for a relative. They intended to go to an Uptown bar.” (http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/officers_shot_man_12_times_fro.html)

At this point an unmarked police car swooped in on Grimes and multiple plain-clothes officers confronted Grimes. In the shooting that ensued, Grimes was struck down by a hail of bullets, most of which hit him from behind. The city’s Police Chief has called the incident a “gun battle,” even though evidence that Grimes fired first has yet to surface. All city officials have claimed that once the case is examined the shooting will be justified. Police waited several days before searching Grimes’ car, in which they claim to have found a shotgun in the trunk along with pistol clips that fit his registered handgun.

Within hours of Grimes death at the hands of the NOPD another young black man’s life was taken by police in Oakland, California. The Bay Area Rapid Transit Police responded to a reported fight on one of the train system’s cars. Pulling a group of young men off on train in the Fruitvale station the police lined several up against a wall. Among them was 22 year-old Oscar Grant. At some point police singled him out and pushed Grant on his stomach. With three officers pinning him down, one pulled back, withdrew his pistol and fired a single shot into Grant’s back.

Several videos of Grant’s slaying by the police have surfaced, among them one which seems to clearly indicate this was a murder: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/05/18558793.php

Each of these holiday killings has created enormous rage among family, friends and communities effected. Grimes’ family in New Orleans has pushed for an investigation and one has now been opened by the FBI. Oakland’s loss of Oscar Grant has also prompted inquiries and protests. The convergence of both killings around the holidays seems to have created conditions similar to how people describe the mid to late 1960s – thick and hot with tension, rage and a lust for justice – even though it is the cold middle of winter.