Hasn’t Sharif Been Through Enough!
A BlackEyed Cloud Over Newark’s Holiday
by Zayid
Muhammad
On Wednesday, November 23rd,
on the eve of Thanksgiving, legendary street peacemaker Sharif Amenhotep found
himself surrounded by legions of Newark police officers as they sought to
affect the confiscation and removal of his Red, Black and Green Mini Bus from
his vending area on Branford and Broad Street.
As the police sought to affect the
removal of Sharif’s bus, they placed him under arrest for protesting its
removal. The incident got particularly dicey when officers appeared to be
cutting or doing something to the underside of the vehicle, according to
observers. Amenhotep, upset about what was happening, got under the vehicle to
see what was being done to it. The furor of the incident would see Sharif
getting his foot broken in two places and put in handcuffs.
The community, outraged by what they
were witnessing, angrily challenged the police officers. It was only a
consequence of Deputy Mayor Rahman Muhammad, a labor organizing veteran, and former
Newark AntiViolence Coalition member Tyrone ‘Street Counsel’ Barnes, pleading
with both the police and an angry public, that averted an insurrection that
could have potentially led to numerous people getting hurt and harming the re
emerging image of the city immeasurably.
Most infuriating about the whole
incident were a number of things...
1.
Was the vehicle being illegally being removed?...Anecdotally it was said that a
city ordinance dictated that the vehicle, or any such vehicle, be removed in the
evening after the business day ends. Amenhotep had been in compliance with the
ordinance. Why then were police were trying to effectuate its removal during
the day when it was lawfully parked is a key issue. That’s what drove the
incident; Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the order to remove the vehicle
was given by the city business administrator even though such an order appears
to be in total violation of local law;
2.
Amenhotep is arguably one of the best known anti-violence activist in the city,
known as ‘The Soul of the Newark AntiViolence Coalition once upon a time and
who tragically made national news when he sojourned to South Carolina to shake
up several communities there when his daughter Sanaa disappeared and ultimately
was found dead only as a consequence of his pressuring law enforcement in those
communities to do more! Given Amenhotep’s profile, why then was the area
swarmed with police, and why was there NOT anyone in police leadership on hand
who could have addressed the situation and properly de-escalated it?;
3.
It is just as important to appreciate that not only was Amenhotep wrongly
arrested and injured in the incident, but the police leadership that was on
hand would not even acknowledge the presence of Deputy Mayor Rahman Muhammad,
who sought to de escalate the situation, and who sought to identify Amenhotep
as a respected community activist and get him the medical attention he
obviously needed once he got hurt. Many are grateful that irate community
members ready to take on the police did
acknowledge Muhammad and Barnes and how that prevented a bad incident from
becoming exponentially worse!
All of this begs more important
questions.
Isn’t Newark going through a
historic police reform effort?
Hasn’t its community based Violence
Intervention efforts brought down violence in the community by 50%?
Haven’t these efforts garnered
national attention as a number of cities are now examining how they can employ
similar strategies to combat violence in their respective cities?
Hasn’t this new ‘eco-system’ showed
Violence interventionists actually working well with the police in the face of
critical challenges like the averting an attempt to ‘riot’ at the old first
precinct in the Summer of 2020 and most recently when two police officers were
wounded by a man with a rifle in a mental health crisis, where the violence
interventionists not only assisted with critical crowd control efforts and
follow up services, but who also helped move people from the building where the
shots were coming from to a nearby school and attending the anxieties of those
shaken residents there...something I would much rather be writing about to be
sure?
With that kind of well established
‘eco system’ in place, how does what happened to Amenhotep even take place?
It shouldn’t have!....At all!
If there is to be a protest
condemning what happened, it should be a ‘united front’ of those organizations
in that ‘eco system’ uniting for the
respect of their work and presence in the community.
The nuances of the incident should
be taken up in an investigation by the new Civilian Complaint Review Board
examining just how that how incident was wrongly handled. This incident and
other incidents of inappropriate police behavior should also regularly inform
the groundbreaking Trauma To Trust program of Equal Justice USA with a regular
updating of that program’s ongoing trainings to help Newark police officers
address contemporary problems within its own police department honestly. Police
officers should also know who their elected and community leadership is. The
disrespect of Deputy Mayor Muhammad must certainly be addressed. And if it
proves to be so that the incident was driven by an overreaching city Business
Adminstrator, then he needs to also be held accountable, and important checks
on the authority of that office need to be put in place immediately to prevent
another incident like this from happening again. Community folks who were on
hand angry about what they saw, especially those who may have videotaped the
incident, should come forward and work with the Brick City Peace Collective and
the CCRB and getting their footage and testimony in the proper hands.
Hands off Sharif Amenhotep!
Salute to Deputy Mayor Rahman
Muhammad and Tyrone ‘Street Counsel’ Barnes.
Shoutout to Mayor Baraka and Public
Safety chief Frage for facilitating the release of Amenhotep.
Stop Police Brutality! Peace in the
Streets!...
‘Baba’ Zayid Muhammad is an elder
activist in the greater Newark-New York area. (‘Baba’ is Yoruba for ‘father’).
He is the founding press officer for NY’s Malcolm X Commemoration Committee. He
is a well known cub of the Black Panther Party. He is a founding elder member
of the Newark AntiViolence Coalition and its outgoing media advocate. He is the
lead organizer for Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (NCAP) and the
Newark Strategist for Equal Justice USA...
©2022
