Make killer cops pay, says community

The Latin@ community in this area is not satisfied with a jury decision rejecting a wrongful death suit brought by the family of Jeffrey Baez.

Baez was 22 years old on the early morning of Dec. 4, 2002. He worked at McDonalds and as a freelance landscaping laborer, and dreamed of being a cartoonist. Born in New Jersey, he was living with his mother, Luz Minerva DiLones, a nurse's aide, south of Providence.

But Baez was unfortunate enough to be a young Latino man whose van looked to Providence patrolman Merrick Cook like one that had been reported stolen. Within minutes Baez had three police cruisers on his tail.

After driving a few blocks, at what police admitted were low speeds, Baez stopped the van at the corner of Potters and Dexter. The police radioed each other that he was about to "bail" out of the vehicle. Baez stepped into the intersection and was knocked over the hood of Cook's cruiser. When he slid to the pavement, he was crushed under the wheels of officer Michael Otrando's police car.

The officers assembled at the scene admit that they checked for and found a pulse in Baez, whose body was described in court testimony as "wrapped around the rear axle." But no medical rescue was called. Before dawn, Jeffrey Baez was dead. He was unarmed and no weapons were found at the scene.

After more than 24 hours, the police allowed DiLones to see her son's body, through a glass pane at the morgue. "They [the cops] don't think you have feelings," she says, describing her treatment by the Providence police. "They think you are an animal."

Baez's family and the campaign against police brutality at DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality, a grassroots community organization in Providence) know that his death was no "accident." DARE members and others concerned with police brutality observed the proceedings of his mother's wrongful death suit against the City of Providence, giving her support as she and her lawyers tried to break the blue wall of silence and lies around her son's death.

On the stand, police officers contradicted earlier sworn depositions about their locations and communications on Dec. 4 and admitted to moving the body and the police cruisers, crucial for the scientific reconstruction of the collision, before the official departmental investigation. But after three days of testimony, and a brief deliberation interrupted by two fire alarms, the jury found the city of Providence not liable on March 2.

DiLones and the entire DARE police committee said that their fight for justice was not over. The police committee members are planning a public response.

Why was it even necessary to put Baez's mother, friends and supporters through months of expensive procedures to be com pensated for his "wrongful death"? How could his gruesome killing have ever been "right"? How could the officers, and the Providence Police department as a whole, be exonerated for their role as judge, jury and executioner when they caught Baez Driving While Latino? Why would police officers engage in a life-threatening chase over an alleged crime of property?

Why is the threat of public humiliation and abuse at the hands of police officers so present in the minds of Black and Latin@ youth that, as one DARE activist noted at a police brutality committee meeting, they will almost always risk greater harm and arrest by running away?

How can there be equal justice under the law in a state where immigrant workers are denied the right to drive, one in every five Black men are denied their right to vote, and thousands are denied their rights to jobs, housing, health care, and other vital necessities?

Only a militant, broad-based struggle for socialism can resolve these burning questions.

Gould is a member of DARE.