As this article was being prepared for publication, another racist police killing came to light. Shelly Frey, a Black 27-year-old mother of two, was killed on suspicion of shoplifting from a Houston Walmart by an off-duty police officer on Dec. 7.
Months of protests have forced a federal investigation into racist violence by the Houston Police Department, one of the South’s most dangerous for poor people and people of color.
Dozens of community organizations have demonstrated against a police department that many say has had longstanding issues with misuse of power, going back decades. The HPD, scorched by legendary poet, musician and author Gil Scott-Heron for the 1977 murder of a Latino Vietnam veteran in his piece “Jose Campos Torres,” has made scores of headlines since, for numerous brutal killings and assaults. Among the more infamous include the 1989 murders of Ida Lee Delaney and Byron Gillum, and the 1998 shooting death of Pedro Oregon. The trio of deaths sparked outrage, but the latest rash of HPD violence has renewed activism against police misconduct.
The strength of the growing people’s opposition to police violence forced the federal government to respond with an investigation into six incidents. The investigation, announced by city officials on Dec. 5, includes two killings involving the Houston Police Department in the last two years.
Having the Department of Justice investigate the HPD is like having wolves watch the hen-house. The DOJ is part of the capitalist state—even the HPD police officers’ union commented that they are not afraid of any investigation—as they understand the role that the DOJ plays under capitalism. DOJ investigations create a façade of justice fed to the masses, but in the end the cops and the courts stand together in opposition to any real justice.
It is going to take a continued mobilization of the people to win any real justice in these disturbing but not unusual cases for a police force whose crimes are nationally notorious and intended to terrorize working and poor people.
HPD’s litany of horrors
In September, Brian Claunch, a mentally-ill, one-armed, one-legged man in a wheelchair, was shot and killed by police after threatening officers with a ballpoint pen. In July, Rufino Lara was killed, even as bystanders said the 54-year-old had his hands in the air.
Beatings by Houston police have also made national headlines. Of the four under Department of Justice review, two involve police attacks on under-aged Black youth. In 2010, high school sophomore Chad Holley was stomped by police officers; four officers were indicted and fired, but the first tried, Andrew Blomberg, was cleared by a Houston jury. In 2011, Officer Angela Horton was fired after a television crew caught her punching a 16-year-old in the face after he had been arrested and handcuffed. In another case in January of this year, Houston police disciplined two officers after a couple alleged they were beaten and arrested, one reportedly for trying to record police abuse with a mobile phone.
No date has been announced for completion of the Houston Police Department investigation. The three remaining officers indicted in the Chad Holley beating are expected to go to trial in 2013. The outcome of the DOJ proceedings depends on the strength of the people’s movement against police violence. Ultimately, a society constructed in the interest of working and oppressed people will eliminate the repressive police forces and courts and replace them with a system of workers’ justice, ending the system of violence imposed to maintain the capitalist social relations through police terror.
