They won’t be home for the holidays!
Remembering Unheralded Police Violence Victims in
New Jersey
by Zayid Muhammad
One of the aspects of police
violence taking innocent Black and Brown lives is how its trauma rips through
the families of those left behind, even in those rare moments when
accountability actually happens.
Take for example, from among the
more well known cases, such as the Eric Garner case. His mother, the amazing
Gwen Carr, has become an incredible beacon of strength for Black and Brown
mothers all over the country, but not without paying another price along the
way. Her granddaughter, Eric’s daughter, Erica Garner, who was becoming a very
vocal presence against police brutality in her own right, died suddenly from a
cardiac episode just months after detailing on Democracy Now, an important
social justice national news source, how the trauma of her father’s death was
affecting her health.
She was only 27 years old...27 years
old...And had just given birth to her second child, a son, whom she named after
her father, Eric, just a few months before.
That interview has bone chilling, near
prophetic dimensions.
Not to be missed is that she suffered
her episode on Christmas Eve and passed on December 30th, 2017, in
the heart of an already painful ‘holiday’ season.
The Earl Faison case, the most noted
case in New Jersey where some measure of accountability took place, saw his fiancée
also die not long after his death. She too was quite young.
Earl’s sister, Taaj Williams, in a
20 year retrospective on her brother’s death said very pointedly “that our
family goes through this every time another one of these cases happens.”
“Every time”...I restate here with
emphasis, because of the continuing litany of police brutality cases that they
have been tormented by for over 20 years now. And her brother’s killers, five
Orange police officers, did federal time in that case.
More recently in New Jersey, we have
the Jerome Reid case...
December 30th, again in
the heart of the holiday season, 2014, Jerome is shot and killed with his hands
up on videotape by Bridgeton police officer, Braheme Davis, at point blank
range in his chest and head. As if that was not enough, we would soon learn
that Davis, not only held a grudge against Reid from a past police encounter he
had as a teenager, but who also had a competing personal interest in Reid’s
former girlfriend. Yet no Jersey prosecutor, in that case from Cumberland
County, nor from the federal government later for that matter, saw fit to
charge Davis.
Jerome’s mother, Sheila Reid, who
already had some health challenges, valiantly became a strong voice against
police brutality. She became the ‘soul’ of the Justice Monday protest of the
People’s Organization for Progress, a weekly protest that was launched in
February 2016, to lift up the cases of Jersey police victims that have not been
lifted up in national media, much like this article attempts to do. The Justice
Monday protests went on without interruption for nearly 300 Mondays until the
Covid Pandemic. Courageous though she be, her health too failed and she passed
just away recently without the officer who killed her son on videotape being
held accountable.
Other continual instances that
sharpen the traumatic dimensions of this kind of loss are the victims’ birth
anniversaries, the anniversaries of their tragic deaths, and the point of this
article, the holidays when families come together across generations and long
distances.
Several New Jersey cases merit
spotlighting. In this wave, however, New Jersey has a tool of accountability
that it is simply not employing with integrity...It’s Independent Prosecutor’s
Bill, signed into law by a nervous Governor Phil Murphy in 2018, a law that
puts the investigation of any deaths in police custody in the hands of the
Attorney General’s office and takes them out of the hands of the former
county-based prosecutorial framework. Murphy was scared to death to sign this
bill until a young man named Jameek Lowery was viciously beaten to death in the
custody of Paterson police while in a mental health crisis, and the streets of
Paterson got hot with protests, even though the bill had already passed both
the New Jersey Assembly and Senate.
The bill was stewarded through the New
Jersey Legislature by a brave, and at the time, brand new assemblywoman
Brittany Timberlake, who explained why she was so determined to get it done in a
very pointed way, ‘I’m pushing this bill for my son.’
Unfortunately, since the inception
of the bill, the Attorney General has hardly been transparent at all with his investigations
and how that office has been dismissing claims against police officers in some cases
that scream for something else!
Take most recently their dismissal
of the case of Hasani Best, for instance. Best was killed in August 2020, a day
after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s
groundbreaking Civilian Complaint Review Board ordinance, one that give that
city a CCRB with Subpoena Power, the Authority to do Independent and Concurrent
Investigations, one that had a social justice based community character and a
Disciplinary Matrix police leadership had to abide by.
Best was in a mental health crisis,
one in which his situation was actually contained by several Asbury Park police
officers, including one who already knew him. He had nothing on him but a
butter knife and the authorities had supports better suited to address that
kind of crisis en route when the officer who actually knew Hasani, Sargeant
Sean DeShader, went ahead and shot him to death anyway.
Jersey’s Attorney General, with a
new tool of ‘public integrity and accountability’ in hand, the Independent’s
Prosecutor’s Bill, let it slide!
Hasani’s former wife, a valiant young
Kay White, who organized a number of meaningful rallies in Asbury Park all the
way from New York City where she resides, is now enduring a torturous pain
management challenge that is defying any health challenge she has actually been
diagnosed for!
That is unresolved ongoing Trauma!
New Year’s Day, January 1st,
2021, Carl Dorsey finds himself suddenly swarmed by undercover Newark police
officers and is shot to death by Detective Rod Simpkins. Simpkins get lauded as
‘heroic’ in its aftermath by the Newark’s Fraternal Order of Police, but he is actually
shown to have an abusive history, one partially documented by the epic ACLU
Petition to the Justice Department that would culminate in the Federal Consent
Decree now overseeing a court mandated set of reforms over the Newark Police.
Clearly those mandated reforms were
not enough to have made a difference here. Simpkins should have been made gone
long ago, but he wasn’t, and it cost an innocent Carl Dorsey his life...On New
Year’s Day!...Not to mention that he was born on Xmas eve. Tell me, someone please, tell me how is the family of this senselessly slain father of four going to have a happy holiday season???
His family is still reeling in
grief, shock and disbelief.
On the 4th of July, 2021,
retired major Gulia Dale III, besieged by the cacophony of local holiday
fireworks in his suburban home in Newton, goes into a mental health crisis.
His wife, worried that her husband
may harm himself, calls the police for help. Twelve seconds upon their arrival
and encounter with Dale, he is dead as they fired on him immediately,...a
decorated career vet who gave his entire adult life to the US Army killed like
that on the 4th of July of all days!
His sister, Valerie, and his niece,
Boshia, courageously pursue justice for him with great dignity and resolve, but
are clearly unnerved when they have to recount his horrific ordeal in public.
Incredibly, not much earlier and
worsening their pain, a white vet, Edwin Greene, in a similar mental health
crisis, in the same town, his situation was properly contained and he was taken
into custody alive, even though he actually fired on the officers who first
encountered him!
So much for ‘Thank you for your
service’!
Just in September, Bernard Placide
Jr. of Englewood, is killed on the back end of a mental health crisis, one in
which the worst aspects of it was over, one in which his family only needed the
police, so they thought, to take him to the hospital to get help. He wound up getting
shot to death while in the agonizing, but non- threatening, throes of being
tasered!
He was only 22...Only 22!
While his mother, Myrlene Hilaire, a
brave proud Haitian immigrant, is trying to be strong in pursuing justice for
her son, the Thanksgiving holiday ripped through her family and home, painfully
recalling her son’s central presence. With culinary gifts, Bernard was not only
a presence at their family table, he was the family cook who prepared their epic
annual holiday feast. That and other dimensions of his humanity will only get
marginally lifted up in Jersey press rooms as will what that family now has to
go through in the aftermath of his death.
Bernard’s death, incredibly, comes
on the heels of an MSNBC Four Part Documentary Series ‘Model America’ which documented
how the local authorities in the Englewood-Teaneck area of Bergen County
refused to acknowledge what was wrong with the police killing of 16 year old
Phillip Pannell, who was shot in the back with his hands up by officer Gary
Spath back in 1990. The incident ignited an uprising that totally shattered
that suburban community’s treasured ‘Model City’ reputation. From the looks of
what just happened to Bernard, and its continued denial of what happened to
Phillip, that Bergen county community has learned nothing at all from all that
was wrong from Phillip’s still haunting case.
To make matters even worse, we have just
learned that the Englewood Police Department intends to promote the officer who
killed Bernard, Luana Sharpe, to detective with absolutely no regard for an
investigation of the incident that is supposed to be in motion by the New
Jersey Attorney General’s office in accord with Independent Prosecutor’s law
just after New Year’s!
Damn the law, this police force is
saying, damn the hurt to his family, damn public trust, we’re going move this
one up now!
So none of these men will be home
for the holidays! And as long as the State of New Jersey and the Federal
Government refuse to demonstrate the will to implement real change in police
accountability, those holidays will continue to be tortuous tormenting times
for their families with dimensions of anguish that may never see the light of
day and that so painfully deserves real support.
We need to fix that.
Make
the NJ Attorney General do Transparent
Investigations of police involved killings.
Strengthen
Federal Consent Decrees with strong discipline for officers and police
leadership who refuse to comply with mandated reforms and with civilian
oversight that includes specific enforcement and accountability measures for
abusive officers.
Pass
into law with the fierce urgency of
now strong police reform bills such as the CCRB Bill, Ban No Knock Raid
Bill, the Police Transparency Bill and more.
Legislators, how about daring to lead
from a place of principle and courage; not a place of fear, expediency,
privilege and non-transparency, as is Jersey’s ‘gangster’ political tradition...
We say this, not just in the name of
Minneapolis’ George Floyd, but in the name of Jerome Reid, Hasani Best, Carl
Dorsey, Major Gulia Dale III, Bernard Placide Jr., Maurice Gordon and
Thelonious McKnight...New Jersey’s George Floyds!
The time has come...
Zayid
Muhammad is the organizer of Newark
Communities for Accountable Policing, (NCAP) and the Newark strategist for Equal Justice USA. A veteran activist with a social
justice profile of more than 40 years, he is the founding press officer of
Malcolm X Commemoration Committee-NYC, now marking its 30th anniversary and was recently spotlighted in the
critically acclaimed Netflix docuseries Who Killed Malcolm X. He is a
contributor to the recently released ‘The Trials of Mumia Abu-Jamal: A
Biography in 25 Voices’, edited by Todd Steven Burroughs, Diasporic Africa
Press...
©2022
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