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-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted
from the Aug. 8, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
When police killed 24-year-old Demetric Moore after a sixhour siege July 25, they sparked an anger in the North Side African American neighborhood here that was still running deep five days later.
The neighborhood is part of the federally funded "Weedand-Seed" program in which local cops maintain a heavy presence with frequent interrogations, searches and arrests. The sweeps are often part of a larger strategy to force Black residents out of areas targeted for gentrification.
"There were so many cops out here, you would have thought the president was being held hostage," said one man, sitting on his porch. He preferred not to reveal his name.
As many as 100 police and FBI agents had invaded this African American community that afternoon. Earlier that day, a team of police and agents had tried to arrest Moore, a suspect in the shooting death of a store clerk.
After Moore allegedly exchanged fire with the police and holed up in a second-story apartment, scores of heavily armed cops swarmed into the area.
"They had automatic weapons, rifles with scopes, cops on rooftops, the whole nine yards," the witness said. "They knew they were going to
As the afternoon wore on, punctuat ed by police firing tear-gas canisters into the house, scores of neighborhood residents came out to watch the scene, many of them openly hostile to the police.
Moore's mother, father and grandmother were part of the crowd. They pleaded to be allowed to speak to the young man. Police Chief Philip Arreola was giving an impromptu news conference when the grandmother broke through the crowd of reporters to confront the chief directly.
"Why won't you let me speak to my grandson?" she demanded. As she was quickly hustled off by other cops, Arreola tried to say that it would be irresponsible to allow family members into the house because Moore was "unstable."
"I asked to use a police bullhorn to talk to Demetric from outside the house," explained Anthony Pugh, Moore's father. "Why couldn't they just let me do that?"
The evening TV news reported that police had shot Moore dead as he emerged from the house and allegedly pointed a gun at an officer. But the front-page article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the following morning reported: "About 7:15 p.m., more than six hours into the standoff, officers entered a house in the 2400 block of North 19th Street and tried to take Demetric Moore into custody."
"He never came out of the house," said his father. "He died in the kitchen. They shot him three times in the chest and once in the back. They told me that after they shot him three times he was crawling for his gun and they shot him in the back."
When the crowd realized Moore had been killed, there were many cries of anger against the police. The cops formed a solid line and began pushing the crowd back. They arrested eight people.
"There is no uprising here," a nervous Arreola told the TV crews as a group of cops seized a young Black man across the street.
Anger in the community is running deep. There was a protest rally July 27 and a march on City Hall the morning of July 29.
At a meeting that night in the community called by Alderman Willie Hines, one woman got up to charge: "I heard those cops, standing right there outside the house. One of them said, `That n_____'s never going to get out of that house alive.'
"And they were laughing when they said it. The ones around the house were all white. They had the Black cops doing the crowd control."
When Hines suggested setting up a meeting with the police, he was shouted down. "The police?" yelled one man. "The police are the problem! Why would we want to meet with them?"
"Why did the cops have to go into the house?" demanded
Rose Lee, coordinator of the African American women's group Sisters By Choice. "The FBI waited weeks to arrest the Montana `Freemen.' What was the hurry with Demetric Moore?"
"That's right!" yelled the crowd.
Lee is state secretary for the Wisconsin Committee for Moorehead and La Riva, organized earlier this summer to support Workers World presidential and vice presidential candidates Monica Moorehead and Gloria La Riva.
After consulting with community residents, the committee had released a statement July 26 condemning the killing and demanding the cops leave the neighborhood; the eight arrested community residents be released and all charges against them dropped; and an independent investigation of the shooting itself be conducted.
"If it is determined that the police acted irresponsibly or with intent to kill," the statement read, "then the individual cop who shot him, the FBI, Police Chief Philip Arreola and Arreola's boss Mayor John Norquist should all be indicted for murder."
The statement was distributed in the community and faxed to the news media.
"We are in touch with the family and stand ready to assist them in obtaining justice for their son," Rose Lee told Workers World. "If this had been a rich white suburb, the police would have waited till hell froze over to make an arrest. But this is a poor, inner-city neighborhood.
"You've got 100 cops surrounded by people who don't want them in the 'hood. It was getting near nightfall and somebody said, `It's time to wrap this thing up. Let's go in there and get him.'
"The community is really angry over this, and we're not going to let them get away with it!"
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)