Police occupy New York City neighborhood After shooting of Kimani Gray

Police occupy New York City neighborhood After shooting of Kimani Gray
By Sandy English; 25 March 2013 – WSWS

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has stationed hundreds of police officers in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush since protests erupted after the shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray on March 9.

Over the weekend, WSWS reporters in the area saw horse-mounted officers waiting alongside dozens of police motorcycles. Police were stationed at every corner of East Flatbush’s Church Avenue and nearby Nostrand Avenue, close to the location where the killing took place.

Mobile command centers with sophisticated surveillance equipment were stationed in the area, and convoys of squad cars and vans filled with police could be seen speeding along the streets. Groups of officers congregated in the side streets, and in adjoining neighborhoods metal police barricades were stacked on sidewalks.

While the police presence was heightened because of the funeral of Kimani Gray on Saturday and another protest march on Sunday, heavy police presence has been constant since March 10. At that time, protesters began a series of marches to the NYPD 67th Precinct building in the neighborhood. Youth confronted the police and ransacked a store that night. Police arrested nearly 50 people at a protest the next evening.

Protests began after two undercover officers from the Brooklyn South Anti-Crime Patrol shot Gray on March 9, a Saturday night, after he left a group of young men who were congregating in front of a private residence.

The police allege that Gray pulled a gun on the officers, and that the officers warned him and then fired. Witnesses have contradicted the NYPD version, and told the media that no weapon was visible. An official autopsy revealed that of the seven shots that hit Gray, three entered his body from behind.

Hundreds of mourners attended Gray’s funeral on Saturday while police officers stood nearby and were stationed on a roof across the street. Police also had a substantial presence at Sunday’s protest.

Carol Gray, Kimani’s mother, has called for an independent inquiry into the shooting of her son.

According to a report in the Daily News, one of the police officers who shot Gray, Sgt. Mourad Mourad, had at least three suits brought against him when he was a plainclothes officer on Staten Island. The other officer involved, Jovaniel Cordova, had two suits brought against him while he was stationed at Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct. All of the suits alleged civil rights violations surrounding false arrest and illegal stop-and-searches.

The police occupation of East Flatbush is an intensification of the decade-long stop-and-frisk policy. Initiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002, this policy directs officers to randomly stop passersby on the streets and in front of residences, question them and pat them down for drugs or weapons. As a rule, only the poorest neighborhoods in the city are affected. …more