Racial profiling behind brutal killing?

Air marshals shot Rigoberto Alpizar to death on Dec. 7 on a boarding bridge to an American Airlines jet in Miami International airport. The naturalized U.S. citizen—Alpizar was born in Costa Rica—and his wife had just boarded the plane for a short flight to Orlando after returning to Florida from a trip to Peru.

Rigoberto Alpizar and his wife, Anne Buechner

Initial reports given by the two air marshals who shot Alpizar stated that he yelled he had a bomb before running off the plane and reaching into his backpack. However, several witnesses have come forward and stated that Alpizar never yelled he had a bomb.

Passenger Mike Beshears told reporters, “He just was in a hurry and exited the plane.”

Another passenger, John McAlhany, stated, “I heard him saying to his wife, ‘I’ve got to get off the plane.’ He bumped me, bumped a couple of stewardesses. He just wanted to get off the plane.”

In fact, not one witness has come forward to substantiate the claims of the air marshals who brutally shot Alpizar, a mentally disabled man diagnosed with bipolar disease.

The government agents claimed they were justified in the shooting and have the right to “neutralize” a suspect deemed a threat. Alpizar was clearly no threat. He was unarmed and made no threatening motions to anyone. He merely wanted to get off the plane.

His wife, Anne Buechner, who was behind him as he tried to exit the aircraft, told the air marshals that her husband was bipolar, that he was harmless but had been off his medication. Her words went unheeded. Moments later, after Alpizar left the aircraft, followed by two marshals, the 44-year-old Home Depot worker was gunned down.

John Amat, a federal official and a deputy with the U.S. Air Marshals service in Miami, said the marshals had the right to shoot to stop the “threat” and even repeated their story that Alpizar had said he had a bomb. Amat wasn’t there, and not one passenger recalled hearing him say anything about a bomb. They first heard the word from the FBI when being questioned.

“They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, ‘What is the B-word?’ And they were like, ‘Bomb.’ I said no. They said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I am,” said passenger McAlhany, a construction worker.

This shooting is very similar to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in London. The police who shot the young Brazilian worker there were caught lying from beginning to end.

They said Menezes was wearing a bulky jacket, that he appeared agitated, and that he jumped a turnstile and ran into a subway car. However, videotape doesn’t lie, nor did witnesses. The video showed a calm young man in a light jeans jacket who used a subway card and walked, rushing only to catch his train. He was grabbed by several cops while sitting in the subway car, was knocked to the floor and shot at point-blank range.

Had Menezes been agitated or nervous, he would have had due cause. The British government had just given greater profiling powers to cops and authorized them to use deadly force after a group of bombings on subway cars. These had been attri buted to anger among young Mus lims over the brutal war in Iraq and Britain’s junior partnership with American imperialism. It kicked up rampant racism against people of Middle Eastern, Indian and South East Asian descent, as well as from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

The two shootings highlight the racism that is endemic to the U.S., Britain and France. While the police of all these imperialist countries are used to beat down workers and “keep them in their place,” the violence and brutality is especially intense against people of color and occurs daily. That is why the outlying ghettos of Paris burned recently. Young North and Sub-Saharan African youth expressed outrage by rebelling in the streets after two youth died while being hunted by cops.

The youths’ righteous clamor came after years of brutality by cops and years of oppression and poverty. That outcry can be heard in oppressed communities throughout the United States, and it should indeed be extended to the racist profiling involved in the Alpizar shooting.