No justice, no peace
Loretta Lynch, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, must immediately order a re-investigation of the police shooting of an Army National Guardsman.
On Valentine’s Day, a jury declined to indict police detective Hassan Hamdy on any charges in the fatal shooting of Noel Polanco. The NYPD says Polanco was driving erratically last October on the Grand Central Parkway. After detectives pulled him over, Hamdy shot him. Polanco, 22, who aspired to become a police officer, was unarmed. Hamdy says he thought Polanco was reaching under his seat for a weapon, which the passenger in the car denies.
But we have heard these blame-the-victim claims before. Anthony Baez’s own asthmanot a chokehold by Officer Francis Livoticaused his death. Amadou Diallo reached for his wallet and that provoked 41 bullets from cops. Jayson Tirado supposedly made a gun-like gesture with his hand that landed him dead from a police bullet. Polanco was intoxicated and that contributed to his death, as the head of the detectives union put it.
That no one is facing a trial for the death of Polanco leads us to question the job of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.
This is not the first time that Brown has come under scrutiny for cases involving Latino victims. In the 1991 Manuel Mayi case, where a white gang chased a Dominican college student and then beat him to death, Brown failed to get any of the perpetrators locked up.
The push for prosecution of police officers who apply excessive force did not come from our criminal justice system. It came from decades of public pressure for accountability at all levels. Our community saw son after son shot by cops to only have their characters assassinated and the system drag its heels, if that.
So on the Polanco case, we must also point out the lack of an outcry from Latino leaders and organizations. Where is the outrage and defense that kids who fear they may be the next Noel Polanco need to see?
Richie Perez, an ardent advocate of police accountability, must be rolling in his grave right now. When he led campaigns against police and racial brutality, he often reminded protesters at street demonstrations that “a community that cannot defend its youth is a community without a future.” This remains true.
We can’t allow our city, on one hand, to push to integrate disconnected African American and Latino youth, but then undermine this effort by delivering an ugly, racist message that a double standard of justice applies when a police officer is the shooter.
A lawyer for the Polanco family announced that they will demand a federal investigation and file a civil suit. This is a pattern with cases of police abuse. But officers who apply excessive force and recklessly kill people must be held accountable in our criminal justice system a responsibility that seems better left to an independent prosecutor, not district attorneys who cower from this duty.
