An off-duty policeman shot and killed DeOnté Rawlings, a 14-year-old Black youth, in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17. The crime that recalls the cold-blooded police murders of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallou and many others.
The cops alleged that the youth had fired on police, who then shot him in the head, but no gun was found at the victim’s body.
The police version of the killing is suspect at best; the murder has outraged the local community.
Washington, D.C. residents are organizing to demand answers and to bring an end to ongoing police brutality in their neighborhoods. City officials’ attempts to whitewash the crime have met with resistance.
Officials initially refused to release the names of the two police officers involved in the killing, but after two days they identified James Haskel and Anthony Clay.
The police shot Rawlings in the head after a brief confrontation. The cops were driving Haskel’s personal SUV. They were off-duty and out of uniform, and they did not identify themselves as police officers when they confronted the youth.
City officials have claimed that the police were looking for a minibike that had allegedly been stolen from Haskel.
According to officials, they drove in the neighborhood and found Rawlings riding the minibike. The police allege that Rawlings shot at them. Then they shot him in the head.
The police version of events raises many questions.
Haskel, the cop whose minibike allegedly was missing, was the only one to open fire on Rawlings. Case, who was with Haskel when Rawlings was killed, drove away from the scene of the crime in Haskel’s SUV.
Case returned to the crime scene later without the SUV. Police later found Haskel’s SUV, but they decline to say where or how they found it. It had a bullet hole in the driver’s side door when it reappeared.
Officials in the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department did not learn of the shooting from the officers. Instead, they became aware of it through a high-tech rooftop “ShotSpotter” sensor that detects the sound of gunfire.
Not only did police fail to produce the gun they claimed Rawlings had fired. They also were unable to produce the minibike itself.
Then, four days later, they claimed to have found the minibike miles away in Upper Marlboro, Md. Police declined to reveal the circumstances under which the minibike was found.
The case has been turned over to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Haskel and Case have been placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure for police shootings.
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty quickly entered the fray and tried to placate the African American community with a smooth PR blitz. He held four press conferences on the issue in the five days following the police killing. But thanks to the response of Rawlings’s outraged sisters, Fenty’s attempts have unraveled.
Fenty, accompanied by D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier and U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor, spoke at a press conference on Friday, Sept. 21. Rawlings sisters refused to play along with the charade. Instead, they demanded to know if the police had tampered with evidence.
There will be a candlelight vigil at the Rawlings home at 7:00 p.m. on Sept. 26. The Party for Socialism and Liberation will continue to cover this outrage and the community’s response as events unfold.
Killer cops part of the system
The brutal killing of DeOnté Rawlings and thousands of others can best be understood in the larger context of the role police play under capitalism.
The racist nature of the society is evidenced in nearly every police killing. It would be unthinkable for police officers to use deadly force on a 14-year-old youth in an upper-class, white neighborhood. Likewise, the police who turned Jamaica, Queens, into a shooting gallery when they gunned down Sean Bell would not have laid down a deadly barrage of bullets outside a yuppie fern bar.
In working-class neighborhoods, the police exist to support and protect the interests of the capitalist class, not the local community.
The concept of a modern police force grew out of the Europe’s Industrial Revolution. The owners of the factories realized that they needed an armed force in order to protect the factories in order to prevent workers from sabotaging machines or stealing products.
The history of working-class struggles for basic rights is full of examples of cops working as armed goon squads against labor organizers. To this day, police are an occupying force in oppressed neighborhoods, primarily Black and Latino areas.
The struggle to find justice for DeOnté Rawlings and his grieving family will go on. To end police brutality, we need to wage a fierce struggle against it while we struggle for a society that no longer values profits over human life.
No more racist, killer cops! Justice for DeOnté Rawlings!
