PAPV Rallies to Stop Police Brutality

About sixty people, many dressed in black, gathered at Freedom Corner in the Hill District on Friday, October 22, and marched first to the Federal Building, then to the Allegheny County Courthouse to remember and demand justice for local victims of police violence.  The event, organized by the Pittsburgh group People Against Police Violence, was part of a national day of action with the theme “stop police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation.” Pittsburgh was one of 32 cities marking the day with an action.

PAPV has focused on pressuring District Attorney Stephen Zappala and Coroner Cyril Wecht to investigate and prosecute police responsible for the deaths of local victims who have died at their hands as a result of shooting or brutalization.  Victims, whose names PAPV organizer Renee Wilson and other demonstrators read and chanted at the rally and march, include Dion Hall, Michael Ellerbe, Charles Dixon, Bernard Rogers, Michael Hunter, Damian Jordan and Andrea Umphrey.

This October 22 demonstration came two weeks after Zappala announced he would not prosecute any of the police officers involved in the death of Bernard Rogers. Rogers was shot and killed by Pittsburgh Housing Authority police on November 15, 2002.  In March 2003 after an inquest into the death, Wecht concluded that there had been no justification for the police’s use of deadly force.  To draw attention to Zappala’s decision, PAPV activists held a mock ceremony on the steps of the County Courthouse to present Zappala with a certificate that read “Stephen Zappala, killer cops thank you.”  At the federal building Wilson also called on US Attorney Mary Beth Buchannan to bring federal charges against Rogers’ killers.

Speaking at the Federal Building and the Courthouse, Wilson also singled out the shooting of Michael Ellerbee as a particular egregious example of police violence.  Ellerbee was only twelve when he was shot in the back by state police on Christmas Eve, 2002.  “They think they can get away with killing a twelve-year-old child, shot in the back at four in the afternoon,” Wilson said.

She also decried Black community leaders’ lack of participation in the fight to stop police violence.  She specifically singled out Pittsburgh City Council member Sala Udin, demanding of Udin, “Where are you?”

Along with other October 22 demonstrations around the country, the PAPV event stressed the connections between police violence at home, and US violence in Iraq.  Carlos Brossard from Black Voices for Peace pointed out that both war and police violence are manifestations of state power.  The police commit “summary executions on the streets,” he said, while war perpetrates summary executions that they call “collateral damage.”   Slam Poet Jeremy Shank performed the poem “For All Those on Death Row Whose Names I Don't Know,” about the atrocities authorities in the US have perpetrated
against their own people and abroad.

- Patricia Lietz has been active locally in the anti-war and global justice movements, and volunteers at the TMC.

PAPV marches from Freedom Corner. (Photos by Marie Skoczylas)