The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

NYPD Executes Another Black Man

Nov 24, 2014

An NYPD cop shot 28-year-old Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project. Akai was unarmed and was described as a “total innocent ... not engaged in any criminal activity of any type” even by police commissioner William Bratton. This shooting comes on top of the killing of unarmed Eric Garner on Staten Island.

Gurley had spent the evening at his girlfriend’s apartment in the Louis Pink housing projects. The couple left the seventh floor apartment and tried to take the elevator down to the bottom floor. The elevator wasn’t working, as usual, so the couple took the stairwell. At the same time two cops were conducting a vertical patrol (top to bottom patrol) of the building. Officer Laing drew his flashlight because there was a light out in the stairwell which had been out for days. When the couple entered the stairwell the cop shot one round hitting Gurley in the chest. He didn’t wait to see who was there and what was happening.

Mayor Bill de Blasio told people that they “shouldn’t connect all the dots” between Akai Gurley, Michael Brown and Eric Garner because this was an “accidental” shooting. Apparently, the hundreds of demonstrators disagree with the mayor’s assessment of the situation.

Maybe it was an “accident,” but why do the cops seem to have more “accidents” when their victims are young black men?

Sorry Mayor de Blasio, but the dots are already connected.