National

Families, Activists Refuse to Forget Lives Lost to Police

Published

11 years ago

May 21, 2015

Marchers take to streets of Baltimore May 10 as part of continued demands for justice in the death of Freddie Gray, 25, who died a week after an encounter with police. (Courtesy of The Final Call)

by Richard B. Muhammad
Special to the NNPA from The Final Call

BALTIMORE (The Final Call) – The tears Tawanda Jones sheds flow freely at times. Her voice breaks a little. But none of it stops her from pressing for justice for her brother, who died during an encounter with police officers, and standing for others who have suffered similar losses.

The death of Freddie Gray and the uprising that followed brought attention from around the world to this majority Black city with a long history of police problems.

Before Freddie Gray there was Tyrone West, who is Ms. Jones’ brother, and there was Anthony Anderson, Trayvon Scott, George V. King and others who died in police custody, or encounters, without prosecutors finding anything was wrong.

“My family means everything to me,” said the 38-year-old educator. The two-year anniversary of Tyrone’s death is July 18, 2015. She sits in church with family, without her big brother. She cries as she describes what happened:

It was a typical summer day. Tyrone, who worked part-time, would drive her car, pick her up and take her to work. “It worked out perfectly,” she recalled. They talked, dropped her children off, dropped her off. Tyrone went to work and some other appointments. At the end of the day, Tyrone was waiting for her. Ironically she would talk to her brother about Officer Friendly visiting her summer class that day. They would talk about the death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager in Florida, and the acquittal of his killer George Zimmerman. “We’re worried about Zimmerman’s there, we got Zimmerman’s on every corner in Baltimore,” Tyrone said, according to his sister. He got a call from a new acquaintance, a young woman, on the hot day. The tired schoolteacher agreed to have him use her car to pick up his niece and pick up the young woman who was stranded.

A half-hour later she had a kind of premonition, sharp sudden pains in her neck, her body, and fell to the floor. She didn’t know what was happening. Her thoughts turned to Tyrone and his safety. She had always hoped driving her car would make things a little easier and help shield him from Black on Black violence. She could not reach him.

Later that night her partner shared news a media report would verify: Tyrone was dead after an encounter with city police officers while driving her green Mercedes in northeast Baltimore.

“My whole world just ended that day. I couldn’t breathe. I was here physically but spiritually, I was gone. It was heartbreaking,” she said.

Eyewitnesses told her Tyrone was beaten worse than Rodney King and officers brutalized him, she said. Police officers and the medical examiner gave the family the runaround to get her brother’s body and her car was impounded, she said. It took five days to see his body, but when the family saw his body it was already made up, she said. It didn’t look like Tyrone and her family has refused to let questions about his death go unanswered. An appeal to the state’s attorney at the time for help was rebuffed, she recalled. Prosecutors said the death was from natural causes related to dehydration and cardiac arrest. The medical examiner was inconclusive on whether officers were responsible for the death.

After months of trying to get answers and access, the state’s attorney met with the family and was cordial while a videographer recorded the meeting, said Ms. Jones. The camera was turned off after introductions and the state’s attorney’s persona changed too, she said.

Don’t get too comfortable in those seats. I am not going to charge the officers, she recalls the state’s attorney saying. Ms. Jones also said then State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein gave immunity to the officers involved in her brother’s death.

A special investigation found the police department erred numerous times during the investigation into the West death, according to media reports. Police failed to say where an alleged bag with cocaine was found and did not test it for Tyrone’s fingerprints, crime scene photos weren’t organized properly and the investigation focused too heavily on Tyrone’s criminal past but did not examine the records of the officers involved. The department also failed to inform the family and needed more transparency, the report added. It did not find any evidence of excessive force.

Despite the pain and threats following a wrongly edited media statement attributed to her about holding “killer cops” accountable, Ms. Jones and her family members have refused to quit.

She backed current States Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby over Mr. Bernstein, who she said callously mishandled her family. Every week is “West Wednesday,” where she, family members and supporters go out and continue to demand justice for Tyrone.

None of the officers involved in Tyrone’s case have been fired and some have been involved in other instances of brutality and death, she charged. Attempts to reach Mr. Bernstein through law firm Zuckerman Spaeder LLP were unsuccessful at Final Call press time.

Dora Moses, 54, moved her children out of the city fearing for their lives. She grew up and raised children here, but fled to Pennsylvania as overall violence and police violence took its toll. She especially feared for her son. She fears for her grandsons who are toddlers.

“I don’t see the problems being resolved to the degree where I feel safe with them being,” said the grandmother.

Her daughter’s boyfriend’s death at the hands of police officers on Liberty Heights Avenue was the final straw. She packed up with no plans, found a cheap home and left.

Her daughters have moved back to Baltimore and she worries about her six grandsons. She would like to see her daughters and grandchildren come back to Pennsylvania. She was in town to help her daughter with the active and talkative young boys.

Sitting on the steps of a row house where her daughter lives, she saluted protestors who marched by calling for justice in the killing of Freddie Gray, an unarmed Black man who the state’s attorney says was illegally arrested and negligently handled by police officers. Charges have been filed against six officers in connection with the death of the Sandtown-Winchester resident.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, between 2010 and 2014, at least 109 people died in police encounters in Maryland. In a briefing paper released earlier this year, the ACLU found deaths dispersed throughout 18 different jurisdictions across the state. But “nearly 70 percent of those who died in police encounters were Black … more than 40 percent of those who died were unarmed, and that police officers were criminally charged in less than two percent of the 109 cases cited by the ACLU.”

The ACLU compiled the paper after learning state officials do not track these cases, the group said.

“State leaders must act now to send a clear message to families, communities and police that all lives matter and that these deaths are not inevitable,” said Sonia Kumar, ACLU staff attorney, at the paper’s release. “We must report and track deaths in police encounters in order to learn the lessons that will prevent these tragedies from recurring.”

“Outside of the families and communities who have borne the brunt of these losses, the full extent of deaths in police encounters has never been formally acknowledged by public officials in Maryland,” said the ACLU. “There is no centralized state or federal reporting requirement when people die in police encounters. There are more than 140 state and local law enforcement agencies in Maryland, but no official tracking of how frequently or under what circumstances they are involved in the loss of civilian lives. The scant national data that is available suggests that Maryland has a very high number of police-involved civilian deaths relative to other states.”

“Five Black people died at the hands of police for every White person who died, when the size of the Black and White populations were taken into account. Put another way, the rate at which Blacks died by a police encounter (deaths per population size) was five times that of Whites. Forty-one percent of those who died (45 people) were not armed with a weapon of any kind.

The number of unarmed Blacks who died (36 people) exceeded the total number of all Whites who died (30 people), armed or not,” the ACLU reported.

“Ten unarmed Black people died for every unarmed White person who died, when the size of the Black and White populations were taken into account. Put another way, the rate at which unarmed Blacks died by a police encounter (deaths per population size) was ten times that of Whites.”

“Thirty-eight percent of those who died (41 people) presented in a way that suggested a possible medical or mental health issue, disability, substance use or similar issue. Seventy-nine percent of those who died (86 people) were killed by police gunfire. Twenty-one percent of those who died (23 people) were not shot; in most of these cases police used handcuffs or other restraints, pepper spray, and/or a taser. Several individuals were killed in the course of a vehicle pursuit.

Ms. Jones said, “The only thing we can do is hold police accountable. We need to put things in place to make sure nobody else goes through this.”

Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon, Sr., head of the Baltimore Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, lives around the corner from where the incident with Freddie Gray happened. He has been working on police brutality for several years and was arrested at city hall trying to get attention to the problem from the mayor and city council president.

He started with the 2010 case of disabled man David Yem, who was shot by a police officer. Mr. Yem, who was already paralyzed on one side of his body and had emotional issues, was shot as an officer fired through a windshield in the Poplar Grove community in West Baltimore, he said. The man had a knife but was not a threat, he said. Mr. Yem recovered. No charges were filed against the police officer, who said the disabled man charged his car.

The shots were fired in broad daylight with children around, said Mr. Witherspoon.

Anthony Anderson was in East Baltimore, in front of family members and grandchildren, when officers said they saw a drug transaction and body slammed him on his head, said Mr. Witherspoon. He died and no drugs were found on the scene or in his system, he added.

Threats to file Freedom of Information Act requests forced police to recant the initial statement, but no one was charged, the activist continued. Last year George King went to a hospital for a tooth extraction and was tased to death by Baltimore city police officers, he said.

Within 48 hours protests were organized outside city hall and thousands came to a second protest in the community, said Mr. Witherspoon.

He said he was present when the former state’s attorney Bernstein told the family of Anthony Anderson no charges would be filed though the medical examiner declared death a homicide.

“This same state’s attorney tried two young African America men twice for harming a dog. The first time these two young men were acquitted. The second time they were acquitted. He tried them twice trying to ensure that these young men were convicted. We can’t even get an officer indicted in Baltimore—this was under the previous state’s attorney,” he said.

“What we are hoping to do is at some point to lobby this state’s attorney, the new state’s attorney that we elected, because of Gregg Bernstein’s complete lack of political will to do the right thing. We are hoping to present these cases back to her for reconsideration,” said Mr. Witherspoon, who has traveled to different places across the country supporting the calls for police accountability.

Charging the officers was step in the right direction, but there should have been first degree murder charges, he said. Mr. Gray should have been in an ambulance, not a police wagon, he said.
“We are tired of the double standard that exists in our society that has it so that officers are allowed to get away with murder. The murder of Black men in every city across this country,” he said.

“I say the integrity of these people who are questioning (Mrs. Mosby), in lieu of this, their integrity should be questioned. Their competency should be questioned. When somebody is held accountable for killing an African America man, then their competency is questioned? That’s racist in nature,” he said.

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Related Topics:anthony anderson Freddie Gray George V. King Marilyn Mosby police brutality police reform Trayvon Martin Trayvon Scott

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OP-ED: Proposition 44 Would Put a Price on Trust

The danger in Proposition 44 is not only its 90 percent figure. It is that the meaning of “qualifying” spending will be worked out later. A clinic preparing a budget today may not know whether a navigator, health educator, transportation program, outreach worker, technology upgrade, or other patient-support service will be counted the way it expects. Yet the financial consequence of getting it wrong could be immediate.

Published

4 days ago

October 6, 2026

Post News Group

Oakland’s public conversation about health care must begin with a simple truth: a doctor’s appointment is not the same thing as access to care.

For a mother juggling work and child care, access may mean a text-message reminder, a bus pass, an evening appointment, or someone who can explain what Medi-Cal covers. For an older patient managing diabetes, it may mean help scheduling a specialist visit and understanding new medications. For a family that has been dismissed or misunderstood in medical settings, access may begin with meeting a community health worker who knows the neighborhood, speaks their language, and treats their concerns with respect.

Community health clinics make that kind of care possible. They are part medical provider, part navigator, part educator, and part trusted local institution. Proposition 44 threatens to narrow the definition of what counts as patient care in a way that could undermine the very supports that allow patients to receive it.

The statewide measure would require covered nonprofit community clinics to spend at least 90 percent of their annual revenue on health care or qualifying program services. The ballot measure directs the Attorney General to establish more detailed guidance on what expenses qualify. Clinics that do not meet the threshold could face penalties for the difference. The Legislative Analyst’s Office reports that affected clinics currently spend an average of about 80 percent of revenue on health care services.

A percentage may look like a clean measure of accountability. But health care is not cleanly divided between what happens inside an examination room and everything that enables a patient to enter one.

Consider the work that happens before and after a visit. Clinic staff maintain confidential patient records. They follow up after missed appointments. They keep information systems secure. They recruit and train employees in an expensive and competitive health care labor market. They coordinate referrals, process claims, purchase supplies, maintain buildings, and make certain that patients are not lost somewhere between diagnosis and treatment.

Oakland families should not be asked to accept the fiction that these functions are unrelated to care.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office says clinics falling short of the requirement could be required to pay the shortfall amount to the state and could seek to recover the money only if they show compliance within five years. The same analysis estimates state enforcement costs in the low tens of millions of dollars annually, supported by fees.

That is a troubling arrangement for organizations that are expected to provide care to people with the fewest alternatives.

Oakland has learned that trust is not built through slogans. It is built when a patient is listened to, when a parent can secure an appointment for a child, when a clinic returns a call, and when a person receives help without being shamed for their income, insurance, language, immigration history, or prior experience with the system.

For Black residents in particular, trustworthy care is not an abstract goal. Persistent inequities in health outcomes and patient treatment are real. Community-centered clinics can help bridge the gap with culturally responsive staff, patient navigators, behavioral-health programs, and partnerships that understand the conditions shaping health outside the clinic door.

Proposition 44 could pressure providers to treat those supports as expendable because they do not fit neatly into a state-enforced formula. That would be a mistake.

Accountability is necessary. Clinics that receive public resources should be transparent, well governed, and focused on their mission. But good oversight asks whether patients are being served well, whether money is managed responsibly, and whether communities can obtain needed care. It should not rely on a rigid ratio that may punish clinics for doing the hard work of reaching people who need more than a brief medical encounter.

A broad coalition of providers and community organizations opposes Proposition 44, including the California Primary Care Association, the California Medical Association, the California Hospital Association, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, and the California Teachers Association.

Oakland needs health policy that expands the circle of care. Proposition 44 risks drawing that circle smaller.

The Oakland Post editorial board urges a No vote on Proposition 44.

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Business

OP-ED: Proposition 40: It’s Time to Play Chess, Not Checkers

Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the wealth of Californians with more than $1 billion in assets. Most of that money would go toward health care, with the remainder supporting food assistance and education-related programs.

Published

4 days ago

October 6, 2026

Post News Group

By Paul Cobb, Publisher, Oakland Post

I understand the frustration driving Proposition 40. I share our labor partners’ concerns about protecting health care and essential services at a time when working families are already under enormous pressure.

But labor itself is divided over Proposition 40, and there is good reason to look carefully at what this measure could mean beyond the money it promises to raise.

Those are worthy investments. The question is whether this is the right way to pay for them.

California’s independent Legislative Analyst says the measure could raise tens of billions of dollars in the short term. But that same analysis warns that California could eventually lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year in ongoing income-tax revenue if some wealthy taxpayers leave the state or change their financial behavior.

That matters because those dollars help support the General Fund and the broader system of programs and services Californians rely on.

So let’s be clear: This is not about feeling sorry for billionaires. Billionaires will be fine.

This is about protecting the people who will not be fine if we get the policy wrong.

For decades, those of us in Black media have watched public policy debates move from crisis to crisis. We have also watched Black communities deal with the consequences when decisions made in Sacramento or Washington did not fully consider what would happen two, three, or four moves later.

We know what happens when funding disappears. Community organizations struggle. Small businesses lose support. Programs serving young people are squeezed. Schools and local governments are asked to do more with less. The people with the fewest resources are usually the first to feel the consequences.

That history should make us cautious about making major changes to California’s tax system without considering the entire board.

If California believes billionaires should contribute more, then let’s have that conversation. There is nothing unreasonable about asking whether people who have benefited enormously from California’s economy should contribute more to sustaining it.

But we should build tax policy that is thoughtful, sustainable, and difficult to avoid. We should not create a temporary solution that could leave us confronting another revenue problem down the road.

This is also why I respect those in labor who support Proposition 40, even though I have reached a different conclusion. They are responding to very real concerns about health care and the people who depend on it. Those concerns should not be dismissed.

But neither should legitimate questions about Proposition 40.

Too often our politics tells us that if we agree with the goal, we must agree with the proposed solution. That is not how responsible public policy works.

You can believe health care must be protected and still question the mechanism being proposed to protect it.

You can believe billionaires should pay more and still ask whether this particular tax is the smartest way to accomplish that.

And you can stand with working people while insisting that California consider the long-term consequences for all of the public programs working people depend upon.

We need to stop treating complicated economic decisions like a game of checkers, where we look only at the move directly in front of us.

We need to play chess.

Look at the whole board. Think several moves ahead. Understand what happens after the first check is collected and spent.

The question before Californians is not whether billionaires can afford to pay more. They can.

The question is whether Proposition 40 is the right way to do it and whether we are confident enough in the consequences to make this kind of change.

Our communities cannot afford for us to discover the answer too late.

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Black History

Listening as a Lifeline: A Doula’s Witness to Black Maternal Health

OAKLAND POST — Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

Published

6 days ago

October 4, 2026

Post News Group

By Antoinette Stewart-Eneh, Special to California Black Media Partners

Word Count: 1058

Note: Client A, B & C, names are withheld for privacy; these accounts reflect my recollections as their Doula.

Client A rocked her hips on a birthing ball, surrounded by pale wood and warm textiles in a softly lit Scandinavian-style office. I was her doula through a Southern California maternal health company combining nurse-led care, technology, and wraparound support.

She was a healthy Black woman in her thirties. Her baby girl was doing well; her partner took notes as we discussed labor and advocacy.

Then we turned to their chosen hospital. I knew it well—and remembered a phrase from another client’s experience: “Policy of Sovereignty.”

Client B had been told she needed a repeat cesarean as a precaution, though the reasoning was unclear. Her obstetrician, who performed her first cesarean two years earlier, had assured her throughout pregnancy that she was healthy, healed, and ready for a vaginal birth. We asked staff to review her chart, consult her obstetrician, and reconsider immediate surgery. Instead, they invoked the “Policy of Sovereignty.”

The physician on duty, we were told, had final authority, regardless of her established care plan. I asked whether an ultrasound or reassessing the baby’s position could offer clarity. Cesareans can be lifesaving. But were Client B’s history, informed consent, and circumstances guiding this decision—or was routine overriding individualized care? We kept asking for her obstetrician. Beneath every request was a deeper question: Was she being heard?

The Numbers Behind the Stories

Statistics arrive in clean columns. The experiences behind them do not.

Maternal mortality and pregnancy-related mortality use different time frames and methods and are not interchangeable. Finalized 2024 CDC data recorded 649 maternal deaths nationally. The overall rate was 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, but for non-Hispanic Black women it was 44.8, compared with 14.2 for White women and 12.1 for Hispanic women.

In California, Black birthing people experienced 56.5 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births during 2020–2022—3.8 times the White rate and four times the Asian rate.

As a doula serving Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, I see faces behind those numbers. I remember concerns raised softly, then firmly, then desperately. I am tired of watching Black families enter spaces meant to protect them, only to discover they must defend themselves while laboring, bleeding, trembling, or recovering.

Returning to Client A

Client A’s labor stretched nearly 48 hours. As her condition worsened, she, her partner, and I asked whether a cesarean should happen sooner. A provider questioned my place as a doula, then said she was next.

Six more hours passed.

She entered surgery visibly ill with a serious uterine infection, her baby malpositioned and stuck. Her partner later recalled the provider saying, “This baby would never have made it through the birth canal.”

Those words landed like a blow. Our urgency had been treated as ignorance. With Client B, we questioned why surgery was inevitable. With Client A, why it was delayed. Doula advocacy is not about one kind of birth. It is about informed consent, individualized care, and timely action. Hospital routine should never outweigh the person carrying the risk.

Survival Cannot Be the Standard

The Black maternal health crisis includes unequal care, untreated conditions, racial bias, delayed referrals, poor communication, and inadequate postpartum support. It is about birth plans respected only until a hospital becomes less busy and postpartum care that asks whether a mother survived, not whether she has what she needs to recover.

Survival cannot be the standard. Technology can support care, but it cannot replace human connection. An algorithm cannot detect fear in a patient’s eyes, and a mission statement alone cannot ensure adequate staffing or culturally responsive care.

The Story of Client C

Before I arrived, I heard the chaos through Client C’s phone. Staff struggled to locate her baby’s heartbeat on an external monitor as her fear and blood pressure rose. I pleaded for an internal electrode before surgery.

“There’s not enough time,” a nurse said.

“I would like to wait for my doula,” Client C called out.

But she was medicated, hurried through consent, and wheeled away while I listened.

In the operating room, after a shift change, another nurse placed an internal electrode and said, “The previous monitor wasn’t working.”

No one responded.

According to her father, the obstetrician avoided eye contact: “We need to move forward.”

Surgery may still have been necessary; that was not mine to determine. But if faulty equipment helped create the emergency, the family deserved acknowledgment and explanation—not silence. No family should have to wonder whether major surgery followed an unavoidable crisis or a machine failure no one recognized in time.

From Prevention to Accountability

After supporting nearly 100 families, I have learned that danger often begins before admission. I have urged clients to seek care—and heard why they feared returning: dismissed pain, harsh words, shame for asking questions.

Care cannot be holistic where Black families do not feel safe enough to speak or return. Representation matters, but providers of color cannot repair inequity alone. They need adequate staffing, mentorship, culturally responsive training, reliable equipment, and colleagues that are reflective of all the aforementioned. It’s not the Black providers job to care for just the Black patients, everyone should have the same goal.

The Momnibus Act, California’s Medi-Cal doula benefit, the Transforming Maternal Health Model and the Perinatal Equity Initiative require more than promises; they need sustained funding, reliable reimbursement and accountable implementation.

Birth should be sacred. Yet too many Black birthing people arrive carrying the burden of proving their pain is real. A doula can listen, educate, comfort, and advocate—but cannot repair a system that refuses to listen. The true measure of progress is what happens when a Black birthing person says, “Something is wrong.”

Are they believed? When equipment fails, is that failure acknowledged? Do families leave not merely alive, but safe, respected, supported, and whole?

Until those answers are consistently yes, California’s maternal health success story remains unfinished.

About the Author

Antoinette Stewart-Eneh is a mother of two, holistic maternal wellness advocate, and birth and postpartum doula who has supported families since 2019. She serves as program operations coordinator for Frontline Doulas, a volunteer client coordinator with the Joy in Birthing Foundation and a childbirth educator in South Los Angeles. She is studying to become a midwife and lactation educator.