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Grenade Kills Harlem Grandmother
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Grenade kills Harlem grandmother
by Lloyd Williams Alberta Spruill The letters NYPD may as well stand for Now Your People Die. Whether it’s being shot 41 times as you enter your home or homicide by hand grenade, New York City still is not a safe place to be if your skin is black. With Al Sharpton off busily campaigning and debating other Democratic presidential hopefuls, it looks as though the death of Alberta Spruill won’t register more than a blip on the outrage meter. But African-Americans should not need the inspiration of a Reverend Al to march on City Hall after yet another senseless killing of an innocent black person by racist cops. Everybody should have been automatically up in arms all on their own, demanding answers. How could such a tragic mistake have been made? How could it have been averted? Who’s head will roll as a consequence? Why does this sort of state-sponsored slaughter happen so often in the black community? Neighbors hold a vigil for police murder victim Alberta Spruill in Harlem. Photo: Mitch Jacobson And until adequate assurances arrive that it won’t happen again, the city should have been shut down. Afterall, Spruill, a 57 year-old church-going grandmother with a heart condition, died when a dozen police officers, in a pre-dawn raid on May 16, broke down the door to her sixth-floor apartment and tossed a flash grenade inside. The explosion was powerful enough to rattle the apartment, shattering a glass top table and sending the poor sister into cardiac arrest. Then the terroristic task force handcuffed her, denying any medical attention until it was too late. Miss Alberta, as she was referred to by everyone in her neighborhood, was a much beloved member of the Convent Avenue Baptist Church. So, what had she done to bring the wrath of the NYPD down upon her head? Absolutely nothing. As the cops later explained it, they had operated on an erroneous tip from a confidential informant that a man was barricaded inside with drugs, pit bulls and a cache of weapons. As it turns out, that suspect, Melvin Boswell, 35, lived on the ninth, not the sixth, floor of the building. He was arrested without incident three days later. Curiously, the break-in to Alberta’s home was conducted by officers from the 25th Precinct, even though her apartment building, located at 310 West 143rd Street, is situated in the 32nd Precinct. Prior to the raid, police investigators made a routine check which suggested that Ms. Spruill was the apartment’s sole tenant. They went ahead anyway and compounded their first mistake with the decision to stun any occupants with a flash grenade. Munitions experts will tell you that this allegedly non-lethal device can cause death in certain circumstances. It’s the type of item best used outdoors for crowd control, for instance to keep an advancing army of angry, bottle-tossing demonstrators at bay. Being confronted by a flash grenade in the street is one thing; being awakened by one exploding in your apartment quite another. This offensive tool delivers far more than a mere flash, as it is designed to provide cover by way of a concussive explosion combined with a temporarily blinding cloud of smoke. The employment of such a potentially destructive device in Harlem in this case is proof positive that black people simply do not have equal protection under the law. For there is no way the police would ever even think of igniting such a grenade so recklessly in the Upper East Side or any other white enclave. While trillions are wasted looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, pockets of police resistance - cops armed to the teeth and already embedded among us - are far more inclined to terrorize the African-American community. Lloyd Williams is an attorney and a member of the bar in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Email him at kam_williams@hotmail.com. |
And again.....
Woman Files Lawsuit Against NYPD
Says cops wrongfully raided her apartment By Patricia Hurtado STAFF WRITER May 28, 2003 An East Harlem woman filed a civil rights suit against the NYPD yesterday, charging that police wrongfully stormed her apartment during a "no-knock raid" similar to the one carried out against Alberta Spruill. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Cynthia Chapman, 40, charges the NYPD terrorized her and her teenage son in a raid shortly before 6 a.m. on April 2. Chapman, a phlebotomist for a hospital in Brooklyn, said she was getting ready for work in her apartment on First Avenue near 114th Street when she heard a scratching noise at her door. In an interview yesterday, Chapman said she thought her husband, Bobby, had forgotten his keys. She said police in tactical gear suddenly burst in with guns drawn and fired a stun grenade, striking her 15-year-old son in the ankle. "They didn't say anything. All I saw next was police in their gear, yelling at me, 'Put your hands up or I'll kill you! I'll shoot you!' They threw me on the floor and put a gun to my head." The grenade also struck a fish tank, Chapman said. She charges that a white male police officer ordered her to put her hands in the air and handcuffed her, threw her to the ground and pushed his weight on her left shoulder. When she denied knowing what the officer was talking about when he repeatedly asked, "Where is it?" Chapman, who is black, said he told her, "I'll kill you" and "I'll shoot you," and put a gun to her head. She eventually overheard that the officers were looking for drugs. She said she and her son were taken away in handcuffs. After police questioned her for hours, Chapman said, she and her son were released and the police apologized for having the wrong apartment. In addition to charging that Chapman and her son's constitutional rights were violated and the mother and son were unlawfully detained, the lawsuit also seeks to obtain information from the police concerning the deadly morning raid at Spruill's Harlem apartment May 16. Chapman's lawyer, James Myerson, further charges that the NYPD policy forces cops to "push the envelope" to make drug arrests, resulting in unlawful and wrongful police conduct. The corporation counsel declined to comment, saying they hadn't seen the lawsuit yet. Chapman said she is still traumatized and shudders when she thinks her son could have been killed. "One day they're going to the wrong apartment and some child is going to think someone is coming to harm them, pick something up and they're going to be killed." Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc. |
I Wonder....are we too de-sensitized?
if all of these attackes are making us desensitized to the atrocities that occur in our community?
It seems like these latest two tragedies, the grandmother and the unarmed African man, received minimal coverage, and the general buzz in the black community is not as outraged it seems as when our brother Amadu Diallo was shot 40-some times..... Are we becoming too desensitized to these tragedies? Your thoughts? |
Re: Nypd
Quote:
Aurora 6 - I am going to let my thoughts simmer and then I am going to give an answer... They are in the pot, but they need more spice and time. :) |
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