ANOTHER POLICE KILLING IN CINCINNATI
Black community calls boycott
By Monica Moorehead
It is a very familiar story with an
all-too-familiar tragic ending. The victim in this case is
Nathaniel Jones, a 41-year-old, unarmed African American who
was savagely beaten to death by at least eight Cincinnati
police officers on the morning of Nov. 30. Cincinnati, located
near the Kentucky border, has an incredible history of police
brutality.
In the summer of 2001, a rebellion erupted for several days
in Cincinnati's Black community over the police killing of
19-year-old Timothy Thomas. The police officer involved in that
shooting was never arrested.
Jones is the ninth Black man to die at the hands of the
Cincinnati police since Thomas' death.
Like the police beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police
in 1991, portions of the Jones beating were captured by a video
camera. This one was mounted in a police cruiser. The police
had been summoned to a White Castle to arrest Jones on
disorderly conduct charges outside a restaurant where he was
found sleeping. Jones reportedly suffered from a sleep
disorder.
The police excuse for bludgeoning Jones at least 28 times
with night sticks was that he weighed 350 pounds and lunged at
them. This is another attempt by the police to paint a racist
stereotype in the minds of the general public that a large
Black man automatically is a menace. The police have also
claimed that Jones had traces of drugs in his blood system as
another justification for their fascistic beating.
The white mayor of Cincinnati came out publicly in support
of the actions of the police.
The police are attempting to use the video to demonize Jones
and neutralize anger but it has been pointed out that at least
97 seconds of the tape has mysteriously disappeared.
However on Dec. 3, a coroner officially ruled Jones' death
as a homicide.
Cincinnati's Black community is righteously outraged by this
latest incident of police brutality, which has claimed yet
another life.
Members of the Coalition for a Just Cincinnati know all too
well that the armed police are always portrayed as the
"victims" and the unarmed victims as the "perpetrators." The
coalition has called for a citywide protest boycott of all
events in Cincinnati.
What happened in Cincinnati is far from being an isolated
incident of police brutality. This systematic state violence
occurs throughout the U.S. Under capitalism, the police
brutally occupy whole oppressed communities, much as the U.S.
military acts as a boot heel on whole countries in the
interests of extracting super-profits.
The Black people of Cincinnati need the solidarity of all
anti-racist forces in their quest for social justice.
Reprinted from the Dec. 11, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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