Berkley, MO- Another 18-year-old African was murdered by a white cop in Berkeley, Missouri, two miles from Ferguson where 18-year-old Mike Brown was executed on August 9, 2014 by a white cop.
Antonio Martin, who attended Jennings Senior High School in St. Louis, Missouri, was with friends at a gas station, when apparently cops said he fit a description of someone.
How often do we hear this? Moments later Antonio was shot in front of the store and left on the pavement to bleed until he took his last breath. The call to EMS was deliberately delayed, although the urgent care center was only a few hundred feet away.
According to eyewitnesses at the scene sharing second by second updates, Antonio’s body was left on the pavement for over two hours. His mother bellowed out shrill screams after seeing her son’s body on the ground.
After two hours of cops attempting to control the growing crowd of Africans viewing the scene, miraculously and magically the cops locate a gun near the body.
We all know the old story of how cops plant guns near the bodies of their victims. The old “throw down gun” is an integral part of U.S. policing in African communities and has a history of its own.
Witnesses have vowed to expose the fact that a gun was not in sight until after the cops forced people away from the scene and surrounded the body.
Although it is the City of Berkley policy that all cops wear body cameras, the cop who shot and murdered Antonio claims that his camera was either not on or that he had forgotten it in his patrol car.
He is accountable only to the people who put him on the streets to terrorize African people in the first place.
It is they, the white ruling class, who control the police who patrol our communities looking for trouble.
That is why he approached Antonio in the first place. Not because he saw Antonio commit a so-called crime, but it is his job to patrol the African community as a member of an occupying army, the police.
That is why we must demand Black Community Control of the Police. If anyone is to patrol our poor and exploited communities with guns, then it should be us, the people who live here who will determine who those people are.
And first of all they must live where we live. That way we can pay them a visit in the middle of the night if they abuse or murder our people, especially our young.
Body cameras and police review boards will not solve this deadly problem. We don’t need to review another police murder. We need Black Community Control of the Police. We don’t need another white grand jury to tell us that a cop followed the law.
That is why we need our own grand jury too. That is why the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) is convening our own Black People’s Grand Jury here in St. Louis on January 3 and 4.
The Black People’s Grand Jury will investigate the Michael Brown case and we will decide whether white cop Darren Wilson should be indicted for murder.
Several witnesses at the scene of Antonio Martin's murder noted that cops often shoot and even kill people in the St. Louis area and numerous people have been killed in the Berkley area which is a couple of miles from Ferguson.
An abundance of cops without name badges, but equipped with riot gear were on the scene along with a swat team. When some cops were asked for their names, the response was “Go F*#K yourself.” People are more than tired of seeing dead bodies on the ground in our neighborhoods.
And hundreds of Africans showed up militantly confronting the killer cops just as their African brothers and sisters in Ferguson have been doing for the past four months.
This is why we need African Community Control of the Cops.
At a time of the year when many people are thinking of gifts and joy, Toni Martin (the mother of Antonio) will now have to plan for her child’s funeral.
But our real gifts of joy will come when we are free of U.S. domestic colonialism, when we win independence and self-determination.
Our condolences go out to the family of Antonio Martin.
We Demand Black Community Control of the Police!
Justice for Antonio Martin!
Build the Black People’s Grand Jury in Ferguson!
