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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OPINION: 57,000 Empty Apartments and Not a Word of Apology – City Limits

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — “Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.”

Published

5 days ago

August 20, 2026

bpusa-syndication

OPINION: 57,000 Empty Apartments and Not a Word of Apology - City Limits

Every indicator in New York City’s housing market is pointing in the wrong direction.

Rents are at historic highs. Foreclosure notices are climbing in Black and brown neighborhoods that never fully recovered from the last crisis. Deed theft, the predatory stripping of generational wealth from families who built their equity over decades, continues to devastate communities from Brownsville to Jamaica.

On top of all these factors, there were more than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments sitting completely empty as of April last year. That number grew by 8,000 units in a single year, with the sharpest increases hitting Brooklyn and Queens hardest.

Brooklyn and Queens. My neighborhoods. Your neighborhoods.

You would think that news of 57,000 empty affordable apartments in the middle of a housing emergency would produce outrage, emergency hearings, and demands for accountability. Instead, New Yorkers got a collective shrug from opinion leaders.

Read that again: 57,000 families could be housed in those apartments. Households currently paying market rent, doubled up, couch-surfing, or one missed paycheck away from the street could have relief. And silence from the city’s housing leadership, activists, and coalitions.

In my experience as chair of the Subcommittee on Affordable Housing in the Assembly, that is not advocacy. That is surrender.

These are the same voices, the same institutions, the same political class that successfully lobbied to effectively ban short-term rentals in New York City through Local Law 18. At its peak, Airbnb had roughly 20,000 listings in New York City, nearly a third the number of apartments currently sitting vacant and padlocked in the rent-stabilized system. The campaign against those listings was relentless, loud, and wrapped in the language of affordability and housing justice.

Where is that energy now?

Where are the press conferences about landlords warehousing stabilized units while families sleep in shelters? Where is the legislation with teeth? Where is the outrage that was apparently plentiful when a Black homeowner in Bed Stuy wanted to rent out her spare bedroom to make ends meet?

Because that is exactly who Local Law 18 hit hardest. Not the corporate bad actors. Not the hedge funds. The struggling homeowner, disproportionately Black, disproportionately in Brooklyn and Queens, who used their home as a small economic engine to survive in a city that grows more expensive by the month.

Those families were told their activity was destabilizing the housing market. Those families were fined, delisted, and legislated out of a livelihood. And now we learn that 57,000 stabilized units are sitting empty while rents spiral and foreclosures mount, and the response from housing advocates is essentially: that’s just how big numbers work.

This is not sound policy. This is politics. And the communities paying the price know the difference.

I have spoken with homeowners across Central Brooklyn who are barely holding on. They bought their homes, sometimes one generation removed from the Great Migration, and they have watched the equity they built become both their greatest asset and their greatest vulnerability. Predatory lenders, deed theft schemes, and rising property taxes all circle that equity like wolves.

Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.

Everyone in this fight knows what needs to happen but will not say it out loud: Local Law 18 needs reform. Common sense reform. The kind that distinguishes between an investor running a ghost hotel and a homeowner renting a room. The kind that actually targets bad actors instead of penalizing the most economically vulnerable property owners in the city.

I hear it in private conversations with elected officials, with housing attorneys, with planners. The consensus is there. The political will is not, because the same advocacy groups and political donors who pushed the original law are still in the room, and nobody wants to take their call.

What this moment requires is courage, not calculation.

Every month that passes with 57,000 empty stabilized apartments is a month of families in crisis, of shelter costs ballooning, of neighborhoods destabilizing. Every month that Local Law 18 remains unreformed is another month a Black homeowner in Flatbush or Hollis faces impossible choices that wealthier New Yorkers simply never have to make.

You cannot ban the small and ignore the large. You cannot mobilize armies of lobbyists against a homeowner’s spare bedroom while shrugging at tens of thousands of warehoused affordable units. You cannot claim to stand for housing justice and then tell 57,000 families worth of empty apartments that the math just works out this way.

The hypocrisy has to stop. Politics have to give way to people. And the officials and advocates who have the power to fix this, who know what needs to be done, have to decide which side they are actually on.

Because from where I stand, in the communities I have served for decades, it is very clear who is being left out in the cold.

Dr. Annette Robinson is a former member of both the State Assembly and City Council in Brooklyn.

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Black History

Oakland Protesters Rally to Defend Haitian Immigrants and TPS

The Haiti Action Committee traces its roots to the international movement that emerged following Haiti’s 1991 military coup, which overthrew the nation’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Political violence sent thousands of Haitians fleeing the country, while U.S. policies resulted in refugees being intercepted at sea, repatriated, or detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Published

6 days ago

August 20, 2026

bpusa-syndication

Activists Gerald Smith and Romaine Charite at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland near City Hall protest in support of Haitian immigrant rights. Photo by Carla Thomas

By Carla Thomas

Protesters gathered in downtown Oakland near City Hall at 14th Street and Broadway on Thursday, Aug. 13, calling for protections for Haitian immigrants and an end to deportation policies affecting Haitian communities across the United States.

Organized as a call to action by the Legalization for All Network and supported by the Haiti Action Committee and other community organizations, the demonstration carried a clear message: “Defend TPS! Legalization, Not Deportation!”

Participants focused attention on the termination of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haiti and immigration policies protesters described as continuing attacks on Haitian immigrants under the Trump administration.

Haitian Romaine Charite of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization urged demonstrators to stand with Haitian families and led chants:

“When Haitians are under attack, what do we do? We fight back.”

Injustice to one is an injustice to us all.”

“Dump Trump!”

Charite and other protesters condemned the federal government’s treatment of Haitian immigrants, describing the policies as an attack on a population already facing extraordinary hardship.

Haiti’s TPS designation was terminated effective July 27, 2026, removing temporary deportation protections and work authorization for hundreds of thousands of Haitian beneficiaries who lacked another legal basis to remain in the United States.

Gerald Smith, a protester and former member of the Black Panther Party during the 1970s, said Haitians were being unfairly targeted and warned that ending TPS would have a devastating impact on Haitian families and communities.

“These policies are racially motivated and unfair,” Smith said. “Everyone deserves the right to self-determination and protection from persecution.”

The Haiti Action Committee cited the continuing political, economic and humanitarian crisis in Haiti as evidence that returning large numbers of immigrants to the country could place already vulnerable people at greater risk.

The Oakland gathering, which drew about 20 participants, reflected a decades-long history of Bay Area activism surrounding Haitian democracy, refugee rights and U.S. immigration policy.

Those policies sparked protests involving Haitian communities, Black activists, artists, college students, churches, labor organizations and human rights advocates. Prominent figures, including dancer and activist Katherine Dunham, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, and TransAfrica leader Randall Robinson, joined campaigns challenging the treatment of Haitian refugees.

In 1992, Haiti Action Committee joined other Bay Area organizations in a dramatic demonstration on San Francisco Bay. Boats carrying Haitian participants were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard while supporters gathered along the waterfront and reportedly chanted, “Let Them Land!”

More than three decades later, protesters have returned to the streets of Oakland, centering on protecting Haitian immigrants, opposing deportation and pressing for immigration policies that provide families with a pathway toward permanent legal residency.

For more information, visit Haitisolidarity.net.

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Community

First 5 Alameda County Celebrates First Year of Measure C’s Implementation

Measure C, a community-led and voter-approved half-cent sales tax, was designed to generate approximately $150 million annually for early care and education. During its first year, the initiative reached more than 20,000 children and supported more than 6,400 early educators and caregivers throughout the county.

Published

6 days ago

August 20, 2026

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Alameda County Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas (left) with Community Advisory Councilmember and childcare provider Nancy Harvey. Photo by Carla Thomas.

By Carla Thomas

First 5 Alameda County marked the first anniversary of the impact of Measure C with a community celebration Friday, Aug. 7, at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, highlighting more than $135 million invested to strengthen early childhood education, families and caregivers across Alameda County.

The celebration brought together families, educators, caregivers, advocates, elected officials and community leaders for an evening of music, cultural performances, and children’s activities.

“Oakland is on the move,” said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, commending all the advocates who helped win the victory for early childhood education and their providers.

First 5 Alameda County CEO Kristin Spanos said, “In the first 10 months of Measure C being available after the Board of Supervisors adopted the 5-year plan, we’ve had over $135 million put directly into the community supporting children and providers with emergency grants, investments, and stipends.”

First 5 Alameda County, the public agency responsible for administering Measure C, focused on quickly moving voter-approved dollars into local communities while developing partnerships, accountability measures, and infrastructure intended to create long-term impact.

Alameda County District 5 Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas: “We’re celebrating the first year of getting money into families’ pockets and childcare providers’ pockets. This is about deploying very vital resources over the course of five years. It’s a billion-dollar impact.”

Community Advisory Council member Nancy Harvey said, “We are totally excited. It was a 10-year fight, and we fought tooth and nail. We had so much support from County Supervisors Nate Miley and Nikki Fortunato Bas, the unions, and the late Supervisor Wilma Chan. This is a historic event – people are watching Measure C all over the nation.”

Harvey explained that small childcare providers received a $40,000 grant, and larger providers received a $50,000 grant.

Childcare advocate and provider Lisa Zarodney of Livermore said, “When I got my emergency funds, I was about to close. The stipend allowed me to continue through 2026 and get all the babies on my wait list.”

In business for 27 years, Zarodney said she is now caring for the children of past clients.

“I couldn’t continue my legacy, my dream, and my passion without the funding from Measure C.”

Harvey emphasized that he next leg of the fight is to ensure workers have a sustainable wage.

“We are now pushing to raise the wage of workers to $25 to keep doors open and people employed,” she said.

First 5 Alameda County’s vision is to build an integrated and equity-centered early childhood system supporting children, families, and communities regardless of race, income, or neighborhood. As administrator of Measure C, the agency has worked to expand access to early care and education, strengthen family stability, and support the providers and caregivers families rely upon.

Through Measure C and partnerships with initiatives including the Oakland Children’s Initiative, First 5 Alameda County has sought to reduce fragmented services and better coordinate public resources.

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