TAMPA, FL—When 63-year-old Arthur Green Jr., a.k.a Pops, pulled his truck over to the side of the road on Wednesday, April 16, 2014, he needed medical help. Instead, the police snatched him from his vehicle, dragged him to the ground and handcuffed him in the middle of the street where he died.
Pops needed help, not handcuffs
Pops was a diabetic for over 20 years. It is believed he was having a diabetic episode while driving home on the evening he was killed.
The Tampa police department (TPD) states that they received calls from drivers reporting a “reckless driver who was swerving across both lanes of Central Avenue.”
TPD also states that after Pops sideswiped two vehicles, he stopped his truck on the sidewalk. Eyewitnesses report that Pops was driving about five miles per hour when he hit the vehicles; no one was injured.
Anthony Portman, a policeman who last year received an award for making over 1000 DUI arrests, was first on the scene.
The DUI champ only had one thing in mind. An article in The Tampa Tribune states “Portman believed the driver’s actions were deliberate and the officer ran to the car.”
The article went on to say that Portman “opened the door and tried to pull Pops from the car. Green resisted [and] Portman put out an officer-in-distress call, a more pressing alert than a simple call for backup.”
In other words, when police respond to an officer-in-distress call, they show up especially ready to throw down on the African community.
Eyewitnesses say Pops was dragged to the ground where several police thugs sat on him and handcuffed him. Pops stopped breathing.
The Tribune article states that medics stayed on the scene for 19 minutes, attempting unsuccessfully to revive him, then transported him to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
When Pops stopped his truck safely on the sidewalk, he needed medical help—not help out of his truck, and certainly not handcuffs!
Police cover-up
The police thugs who murdered Pops didn’t know who he was when they killed him.
Immediately after Pops was identified as the husband of Lena Young Green and the stepfather of Kurt Young and Owen Young—all prominent members of the Tampa community—the police began a media cover-up.
Laura McElroy, the official spinperson for the TPD, made statements attempting to smear Pops’ character, saying that he was a “reckless driver” and calling him “combative.”
She also mentioned that Tampa fire and rescue had been to Pops’ house twice this year for emergencies related to diabetes, as if that had something to do with his death at the hands of the police.
The people are smarter than the police cover-up, though.
When the police spin-person suggests that Pops was a “reckless driver,” the people are smart enough to realize that even during his medical emergency, according to the police report, Pops managed to get his truck out of traffic without hurting anybody.
When it is suggested by the police spin-person that Pops was “combative,” the people are smart enough to ask, “How can somebody who is sitting securely inside a vehicle be combative, especially a sick, 63 year old man?”
The city of Tampa must pay for murdering Pops
The TPD robbed the Tampa community of an invaluable asset when they killed Pops and they owe this community more than a meaningless apology.
Portman and TPD chief Jane Castor must go!
The people realize that the vicious treatment of Pops is an extension of Castor's disdainful and inhumane attitude towards the African community, which is expressed through her leadership of the Tampa police.
It was Castor’s inhumane leadership that permitted Portman, a gung-ho DUI champion to run loose in the African community.
The African community is full of people who struggle with diabetes, hypertension, heart trouble and all of the other illnesses that colonialism afflicts us with.
As a matter of fact, it was that same hateful disposition of the TPD that sent trigger-happy policeman, Gregory Pryor, into a volatile situation at a Tampa housing project.
At the housing project, Pryor shot 16-year-old Javon Neal to death in 2012, not even a year after Pryor had killed an unarmed man.
The people demand relief from hateful and inhumane treatment by the Tampa police department in the form of Castor’s resignation, immediately!
If she refuses to resign, we demand Bob Buckhorn, the city mayor, fire her!
Furthermore, we demand that the Resources In Community Hope (R.I.C.H.) center in Robles Park, a police outfit masquerading as a recreational opportunity for poor children in the community and the funding that comes with it, be handed over to the community and renamed the Arthur Green, Jr. Community Center.
Revolutionary organization is our only protection against police murders!
The way Pops lived his life exemplified working class leadership. He lived in the same house, in the hood, for thirty years and was married to the same woman for twenty-five years.
Pops and his wife Lena Young Green, also a leader in the community, raised four boys, Kurt Young, department of political science chair at Clark Atlanta University, Owen Young, an area leadership director of Hillsborough county schools, Kareem Young, the head strength coach at Appalachian State and his name sake, Arthur Green, III.
Pops worked the same job in the Hillsborough county schools system until he retired. After retirement, he dedicated his time to his community.
Pops kept an eye on his neighbors and kept Robles Park, the park across the street from his house, clean.
His leadership of the Robles Park little league football team resulted in several young men from that poor neighborhood earning opportunities to improve their lives by playing football in college, an accomplishment of which he was most proud.
Pops had no criminal record and only one traffic ticket in 10 years. None of Pops accomplishments, nor those of his wife and his son’s, however, could protect him from the police killing him in the streets.
Only an organized community can do that.
Organize and fight police aggression until we make it stop!
Phone: 813-274-8251
Twitter: @bobbuckhorn, @cityoftampa's
Address: 306 East Jackson Street – Tampa, FL 33602
Tampa police chief Jane Castor MUST GO if black people are going to have a chance at living without being mistreated, brutalized or killed by the Tampa police department.
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