5 September 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Cops snuff out young lives

originally by: Workers World
published: 2 September 2012

Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. was just 13 years old when he was killed by “Robocop” Brian George on Sept. 27, 1994. Nicholas, an honor student at Nathan Hale Middle School, was playing in a stairwell at the Gowanus Houses where he lived in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The 18th annual Nicholas Heyward Jr. Day of Remembrance was held on Aug. 25. The next day Nicholas would have been 31.

People gathered in Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. Park, next to the Gowanus Houses. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hines refused to even present a case to the grand jury against the shooter cop. But the people in the neighborhood forced the Parks Department to rename their park after their young hero.

29 August 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Why did police shoot dead an unarmed man 7 years ago?

by: Defend the Right to Protest
published: 29 August 2012

Police officers have shot dead 41 men and one woman in the past 15 years. Some of the names on that list, Mark Duggan, Jean Charles de Menezes and Mark Saunders, have become household names after the controversies surrounding their deaths were exposed.

Another name on that list, Azelle Rodney, is not engrained into the public consciousness. But, with a public inquiry into his death due to open on Monday, seven years after he was shot at close range six times by an officer known only as E7, it could soon be.

Mr Rodney, a 24-year-old black man, was in the back of a Volkswagen Golf when it was stopped by three police vehicles carrying 14 specialist firearm officers from the Met’s elite C019 armed unit in April 2005.

17 August 201217 December 2022 4WardEverUK

‘Lessons Will Be Learned’ after the death of Sean Rigg, say police

originally by: The Platform
published: 11 August 2012

The mealy-mouthed phrase ‘lessons will be learned’ seems to be the last refuge of all senior police officers when caught out with no one else to blame and no other way to explain away a public scandal.

We heard it again on Newsnight (BBC2) on 1 August as Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne, the second most senior officer at Scotland Yard, squirmed in his seat and comprehensively failed to convince anyone that his force had behaved ethically or honourably in relation to the squalid and eminently preventable death of Sean Rigg at Brixton Police Station in August 2008.