BRONX––Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old African woman, was shot and killed in her own home by a NY Police Department sergeant, Hugh Barry, in the Bronx on Tuesday.
Deborah struggled with mental issues, including schizophrenia. Her neighbors called the police for help after noticing that she was acting erratically.
A gang of cops arrived and, according to their account, found Deborah naked with a pair of scissors.
Murderous cop Barry, who was sued twice in recent years for police brutality, killed Deborah after she picked up a baseball bat.
Bill de Blasio: “shooting of Deborah Danner is tragic”
New York mayor de Blasio in his statement to the press focused on Deborah’s mental contradictions. He went on to describe her murder by the occupying military force as “tragic” and “unacceptable”
He added, “It should never have happened, it’s as simple as that.”
DeBlasio’s statement ignores the underlying contradiction that the police are an occupying military force who are in place to oppress, harass, terrorize and murder us Africans.
He fails to see that police murders like Deborah’s do happen, and happen daily because Africans are colonial subjects in the U.S. who live at the mercy of the oppressive colonial State.
We know that the police are illegitimate and do not belong in our communities, period.
Going by DeBlasio’s statements, however, why wasn’t Barry removed after being sued twice in recent years for brutality? “It should never have happened” is a hollow statement when no steps are made to reprimand and punish murderous police and prevent said police from killing our people in the future.
Deborah’s murder shouldn’t have happened. But it did because it is the role of the State to sweep police murders and violent acts against Africans under the colonial rug, and give cops the green light to kill us again.
Deborah Danner’s statements against police violence against mentally ill Africans
Deborah documented her struggle with mental illness and raised criticisms of the police who opted to murder other mentally-ill Africans instead of offering medical help.
In an essay which she penned in 2012, Deborah stated: “We are all aware of the too-frequent news stories about the mentally ill who encounter the police instead of mental-health professionals and end up dead.”
It is in the exact interest of the police to kill us. They have no interest in providing medical help or assistance.
The track record shows with the police murders of Ronald Madison, who was shot in the Back during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Shereese Francis, who was suffocated by police as they handcuffed her on the bed in 2012; and Alfred Olango who was murdered in El Cajon, California last month. These are only a few.
Get these pigs out our communities!
Body cams, police review boards, sensitivity training and unlearning racism classes will do nothing to prevent the police from carrying out their role of murdering Africans.
We must make the clear un-compromised demand that the police immediately withdraw from our communities.
“The U.S. police is an illegitimate standing army, a colonial army in the African community and must withdraw immediately from our community, to be replaced by our liberation forces whose struggles in defense of our community and against our oppression demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest.” – 14-point platform of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).
Only then will we prevent the police from slaughtering us.
Uhuru!
Join the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP)
