By Stolen Lives Project
Review by Larry Everest & and the staff of Revolution Books, Berkeley
Crime has been dropping for a number of years, but you’d never know it
from the capitalist press, which is overflowing with crime coverage and
“reality-based” cop shows. Yet there’s one crime wave the media rarely
touches and never seriously examines: the epidemic of killings by law enforcement.
Indeed, the U.S. Department of Justice has been required since 1994 to
gather and disseminate statistics on the number of people killed by “law
enforcement.” But it’s done nothing other than to report that about 350
cases of “justifiable homicide” occur by the police annually.
Stolen Lives: Killed by Law Enforcement is a powerful antidote to this
official and media silence. Published by the Stolen Lives Project, a joint
effort of the Anthony Baez Foundation, the National Lawyers Guild, and
the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, it’s dedicated to
“all those who have lost their lives at the hands of brutal law enforcement
officers and to the families of victims who have inspired a movement to
fight for justice and demand that police brutality stop.”
This unique, on-going project attempts to expose the true circumstances
and magnitude of law enforcement killings and to “put a human face on a
horrifying epidemic.” Gathering information from newspaper articles, reports
from families of the victims, eyewitnesses, activists against police brutality,
and other sources, Stolen Lives paints a devastating picture of the extent
and impact of state violence.
This second edition of Stolen Lives presents an updated accounting of those
killed by law enforcement since 1990. Over 2,000 cases are listed. Their
stories vary from one or two sentences, for which little information is
available, to much more detailed accounts of well-known cases, such as
Amadou Diallo, shot 19 times by New York police. Stolen Lives also includes
more detailed narratives of 40 individuals killed by law enforcement—who
they were, what they meant to their families, and the impact of their deaths
on loved ones.
Karen Saari, chief researcher for the Stolen Lives Project, estimates there
are at least three police killings every day in the U.S., and sometimes
as many as ten a day. While researching Stolen Lives, she found that:
while police killings increasingly occur across a broad range of people,
over three-fourths of the victims are people of color
when police arrive on the scene of an incident, they often escalate the
situation, rather than diffuse it, with SWAT-style actions
many police killings occur within minutes or even seconds after police
arrive on the scene
in most cases victims are unarmed and/or have committed no crime, or were
involved in a situation that could have been resolved without the use of
deadly force
Stolen Lives shreds the usual story-line presented by TV news and cop shows
when dealing with police killings: courageous cops forced to defend themselves
after being assaulted by hardened criminals, drug addicts, or vicious gang
members. While Stolen Lives provides the details of well-known police killings
such as Anthony Baez and Tyisha Miller, it also includes many stories that
never make the evening news:
Harold Shover, who was shot twice by a Phoenix police officer from within
two feet. Cops claim that Harold was advancing on them in a “threatening
manner” with a whiskey bottle held over his head.
Mario Paz, shot twice in the back by an LA SWAT team looking for drugs
and money. The person named on the search warrant did not live at the house
and had moved out of the neighborhood years earlier.
Adrian Reynolds, who died after being beaten and brutalized by more than
six “corrections” officers in a Kentucky jail. The officers claimed they
were trying to prevent Reynolds from committing suicide. His family believes
he was targeted because he was planning on filing an excessive use of force
complaint against Louisville officers who initially arrested him.
The father of Jerrold Hall, shot in the back of the head by a Bay Area
Rapid transit officer in 1992 on suspicion of stealing a Walkman, said,
“All over the country. I go to different places and I hear these horror
stories. And what happens? DA’s don’t indict, some people don’t even get
that far—they don’t even get to a grand jury. We can’t slack off. We’re
going to have to continue to push, and make things happen for ourselves…No
justice, no peace.” Indeed, one of the goals of the Stolen Lives Project
is to “broaden and strengthen this movement, and compel people from all
walks of life to act to stop police brutality.”
Stolen Lives attempts to speak for the victims of police brutality who
can no longer speak for themselves, and to inspire a movement to demand
that police brutality stop. It is an invaluable tool for anyone organizing
against or seeking to expose police brutality and state violence in the
U.S. Z
Larry Everest is a correspondent for the Revolutionary Worker newspaper
and author of Behind the Poison Cloud: Union Carbide’s Bhopal Massacre.
