Screen shot of We Charge Genocide’s website featuring those killed by Chicago police
The Chicago Police Department shot over three hundred people in the past five years. In that same time span, 89 people were killed, and a grassroots organization led by youth of color in Chicago is calling attention to the stories of eleven of the individuals who were killed and also one who survived.
The organization, We Charge Genocide (WCG), started in June to document human rights abuses by Chicago police. They prepared a report that would be presented to the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva as part of a periodic review process of which signatories to the Convention Against Torture (CAT) participate.
The name of the organization comes from a petition submitted by the Civil Rights Congress in 1951. The petition documented 153 racial killings and other human rights abuses that had been mostly committed by police.
Last week, the organization’s report to the UN was made public [PDF]. Eight organizers from WCG plan to travel to Geneva in November to urge the UN Committee to call out the Chicago Police Department for engaging in treatment that violates the Torture Convention.
As part of the organization’s effort, a multimedia website was produced to complement the report. One section on people who the Chicago police have killed in the past five years was unveiled on October 28.
Two of the stories involve cases where witnesses saw the young black men raise their hands to surrender to police, but that did not stop the police from shooting them dead.
On Sunday, August 24, of this year, police responded to a call that an “armed man” was in east Garfield Park on the west side. They “jumped out of their car and pointed their guns at everyone in the vicinity, ordering them to get down.” Officers chased Roshad McIntosh, a 19-year-old father, to the back porch of his home. Witnesses say he had his hands up and even got down on his knees. But police shot him and later claimed to have recovered a gun from the scene.
His mother, Cynthia Lane, has demanded information from the police on who killed her son. Police have refused to provide her basic information on what happened.
Warren Robinson, a 16-year-old who lived in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the south side with his grandmother, was a rapper and singer. He was a part of a “young emerging hip-hop crew BOB/FOE, Family Over Everything.” Police were called to his grandmother’s home when gunshots were reported. Officers believed Robinson matched the description the caller had provided and chased him “through an alley.”
“Neighbor Keiyana Hawkins told the Chicago Tribune she went outside and saw a young man running and surrendering with his raised hands when police officers opened fire. The police shot Warren twenty times, according to his mother, Georgina Utendahl. ‘The police killed him,’ she told news media. ‘Why they killed him, I don’t know. We want answers,’” according to a WCG summary.
Three of the highlighted killings led to civil suit settlements.
Rekia Boyd, a 22-year-old, was away from her family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in Chicago with friends. On March 21, 2012, off-duty police officer Dante Servin stopped her and her friends while they were in North Lawndale’s Douglas Park on the west side. Servin told them to “keep the noise down.” The officer continued to exchange words with Rekia and her friends and then pulled out his gun and fired “at least five rounds at the group.” One of the bullets hit the back of Boyd’s head and killed her. Servin later claimed one of her friends had a gun but he had been holding a cellphone.
The City of Chicago settled with the Boyd family for $4.5 million. Meanwhile, Servin was actually charged with “involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct” and is scheduled to go on trial in December.
Jamaal Moore, a 23-year-old father with a 3-month-old son, was killed on December 15, 2012.
…In the late morning hours of a chilly and wet winter day, officers responded to a call that televisions had been stolen from the back of a truck. After a car chase through the south side Englewood neighborhood, Jamaal exited the rear of an SUV in which he was riding, and was then struck by the officer’s car. According to a civil rights lawsuit brought by Jamaal’s family, an officer then shot him twice, in the hip and back, as he struggled to his feet and attempted to flee. In fact, according to the complaint, Jamaal was literally in the officer’s hands when she fired her service weapon and ended his life…
Jamaal’s eldest sister apparently asked officers about her brother after he was killed and an officer replied that he was “just another nigger dead.” Ultimately, in 2013, the City of Chicago settled a civil rights suit filed by the family for $1.2 million, but no officer was prosecuted or fired.
William Hope Jr. was sitting in his car in early July 2010 on the south side near his home in Englewood. He was eating lunch in the parking lot of a Popeye’s restaurant. Officers parked a vehicle “perpendicular to the front of his car” and blocked his exit.
As the officers approached the driver’s side, William began maneuvering out of his spot. According to the officers’ own accounts, William’s car was moving at a speed of no more than 3 mph.
One officer reached into the car, in an attempt to turn off the engine. Soon after, the other officer fired at William. Shot four times, he died on the scene. The total time span between the officers’ arrival and firearm discharge was less than one minute, according to a report on the case by the National Lawyers Guild.
A federal court jury awarded Hope’s family $4.6 million in 2012 after the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit that included evidence of “improper seizure, excessive force, unlawful detention and battery.” But no officer was prosecuted or fired.
Since 2004, police-related lawsuits have cost Chicago and its taxpayers over $500 million. The Better Government Association reported that lawsuits cost the city $89.6 million in 2013. Meanwhile, instead of prosecuting officers and working to break up the “code of silence” in police departments, the city has closed down schools, mental health clinics and even police stations.
In a few of the incidents highlighted, the young men of color took off running when confronted by police. One of those young men is 19-year-old Willie Miller, who was killed by police on April 9, 2010.
Tacarla Tribble said after her brother was gunned down, “They’re shooting us down like dogs in the street. We’re scared, we’re afraid. Why do they think we take off and run? Because we’re afraid of what they might do. We’re afraid.”
What police are doing by essentially executing these young people of color before (or instead of) placing them under arrest is denying them their due process rights as US citizens. They are shooting people of color and depriving them of their right to a trial. They are demonstrating that the lives of people of color do not matter to them. And they are also killing to send a message to communities that their authority is to be feared and not challenged.
Or, as New York Police Department whistleblower Frank Serpico recently put it in a column for POLITICO:
…Today the combination of an excess of deadly force and near-total lack of accountability is more dangerous than ever: Most cops today can pull out their weapons and fire without fear that anything will happen to them, even if they shoot someone wrongfully. All a police officer has to say is that he believes his life was in danger, and he’s typically absolved. What do you think that does to their psychology as they patrol the streets—this sense of invulnerability? The famous old saying still applies: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…
Read the stories of each of the twelve young people of color highlighted by WCG here.