Another Day, Another Death by Memphis Police

Greetings,

The Memphis Police Department has become a death squad. Police shot and killed an unidentified man on Wednesday night, April 10. He was the fifth person (not the fourth as the newspaper incorrectly states) Memphis cops have shot and killed so far in 2013, and the 16th to die at the hands of the police since January, 2012. Tomorrow, funeral services will be held for George Golden, who died last week from injuries he received on March 27 when he was shot and then beaten by police as he lay injured on the ground.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/apr/10/memphis-police-shoot-erratic-driver-in-clash/

Until there is community control of the Memphis Police Department, the police will continue to act as judge, jury and executioners.

Peace and love,
JoNina Ervin
Memphis Black Autonomy Federation
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Thanks to the Memphis Black Autonomy Federation, we learn about the many deaths of Memphis area residents by police officers. In 2012, there were at least 12 people, and that total does not include dead inmates whose demise is sometimes covered up like the Wrongful Death of Larry Neal, my disabled brother who was secretly arrested for 18 days before being killed on August 1, 2003. It appears that 2013 is a more bloody year than 2012 was, since there were already five new deaths before the end of April.

In my experience, the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) has a "hands off" policy regarding violence from the Memphis Police Department and in the Shelby County, Tennessee Jail, even when the jail was under direct overview by the USDOJ. One does not know how much their protection from federal investigations and accountability costs Shelby County officials annually.

This writer feels strongly that if community control was established over the Memphis Police Department, the community oversight board would be peopled with individuals like those NAACP members who are/were on the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in 2003, which covered up Larry Neal's murder by "The Cochran Firm fraud" (Google the term). Unless and until the USDOJ protects the human rights of disenfranchised citizens - the black and poor - police violence will continue to escalate throughout America.

Mary Neal, Wrongful Death of Larry Neal
http://WrongfulDeathOfLarryNeal.com