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Anti-police brutality protesters take over Albuquerque City Council meeting
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Anti-police brutality protesters take over Albuquerque City Council meeting
Anti-police brutality struggle takes another step forward
May 6, 2014
Protesters take over the City Council in Albuquerque, N.M. on May 5
On May 5 anti-police brutality activists and community members in Albuquerque effectively shut down the City Council meeting and reconvened it as a People’s Meeting, a truly unprecedented event in the recent history of Albuquerque.
ANSWER New Mexico played a leading and decisive role in planning the City Council takeover.
In this planned, organized act of non-violent civil disobedience, nearly 50 protestors massed at the podium during public, comment carrying banners and signs. Protester David Correia read a statement demanding justice for the families of victims, the indictment of officers involved in shootings and the disarmament and immediate termination of all officers with a record of brutality, among other demands.
In the decades-old tradition of the Albuquerque anti-police brutality struggle, an arrest warrant was then issued for Albuquerque Police Department Chief Gordan Eden as an accessory after-the-fact in the murders of James Boyd, Alfred Redwine, Mary Hawkes and Armand Martin—all killed during Eden’s three-month tenure as chief.
A new movement is born in Albuquerque
The outbreak of a massive people's movement against police brutality and police killings broke out in Albuquerque six weeks ago following the APD’s videotaped killing of a homeless and mentally ill man, James Boyd, for “illegal camping.”
After APD's cold-blooded murder of James Boyd, ANSWER New Mexico organized an emergency demonstration of well over 1,000 protestors, who marched to APD head quarters demanding justice for Boyd and that the shooting officers be indicted and charged with murder. The Albuquerque Journal, the most widely read local paper, described the protest as “by far the largest of its kind in Albuquerque in recent memory.”
Weeks of mass demonstrations and community organizing eventually forced the federal government to intervene. The Department of Justice scrambled to publish the results of a 16-month-long investigation into APD’s pattern of brutality. The DOJ report was damning and defined the APD as a department that engages in the routine unjustified use of lethal and non-lethal force.
A significant number of police killings in Albuquerque involve persons with mental illnesses who are in crisis. Between 2010 and 2011, the New Mexico Public Defender Department found that nearly 75 percent of those shot by police suffered from mental illness.
APD responds to new movement by killing three people in six weeks
The response of APD to the new protest movement and the scathing DOJ report has been to kill three people in six weeks—in other words, to increase the number of shootings and killings, while stonewalling the release of information to the public about the killings. At a press conference following the killing of a homeless teenager, Mary Hawkes, on April 22, Chief Eden announced that video from the shooting officer’s lapel camera could not be “extracted.” When pressed by media about the reason why, he refused to answer.
The APD has defied all attempts by the community and local political establishment to curtail their heinous pattern of violence.
City Council meeting turns into a true People’s Meeting
The growing perception that all formal avenues of petitioning for justice have proven ineffective in either combating or curtailing the hardcore racist APD—who have in fact gone on a murder spree since the protest movement began—led activists to employ the tactic of civil disobedience.
After the people’s arrest warrant for Chief Eden was read, protestors announced that they would not relinquish control of the meeting until Albuquerque Mayor Berry, who has turned his back on the issue of police brutality all together, showed up to hear the people’s demands.
Amid chants of “Arrest Gordan Eden!” and “Fire Mayor Berry” a contingent of officers quickly surrounded the chief and whisked him away. With the breakdown of chamber decorum and protocol, City Council members left smoke behind as they raced for the door, with the exceptions of Councilman Garduno and Councilwoman Pena, who were the last to leave.
Activists and community members then occupied the vacant seats of the City Council and, after reconvening the meeting as a People’s Meeting, presided over several votes of no-confidence in the police chief, the mayor, and the mayor’s top administrator. The person in the council president's chair was the 11-year-old son of a union organizer.
The police were wholly unprepared and after assessing the number of determined people engaged in civil disobedience, and with the media everywhere, made the tactical decision to make no arrests.
The People’s Meeting was called to a close in an orderly fashion with the announcement of plans to organize an historic civil rights demonstration in the city of Albuquerque.
Reprinted from Liberation News
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Dramatic community sit-in at Mayor's office demands end to police brutality in Albuqu
Dramatic community sit-in at Mayor's office demands end to police brutality in Albuquerque
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Dramatic community sit-in at ABQ Mayor's office protests rampant police brutality
Several ANSWER organizers among 13 arrested
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Organizers hang "crime scene" tape
Sit-in in Mayor's office
Prof. Correia, falsely charged with a felony
ANSWER organizer Oscar Chavarria
APD's military response to the non-violent action
Photos by Joleen Carrico
Statement issued by ANSWER New Mexico on June 2
Three weeks after the take-over of Albuquerque’s City Council chambers to protest police violence, community members and families of victims staged a near two hour sit-in at the Mayor’s office to protest Mayor Barry’s failure to use the authority of his office to take meaningful action against rampant police killings, violence and abuse.
Around 20 people walked into the Mayor’s office, put up yellow “crime scene” tape and sat on the floor chanting for officers involved in killings and incidents of brutality to be fired, arrested and jailed. Immediately after the sit-in began a press conference was called by the organizers, which took place 30 minutes later outside the building.
Organizers and participants included several family members of victims killed by APD, the ANSWER Coalition, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center Task Force on Public Safety and more.
The non-violent sit-in triggered an excessive, massive martial response. City Hall was immediately locked down. Police swarmed a perimeter that spanned several city blocks. The Albuquerque SWAT team then stormed into the building carrying assault rifles.
The sit-in ended with thirteen arrests. Most were charged with criminal trespassing, unlawful assembly and interfering with a public official or staff. One protester, Professor David Correia, was unjustly charged with felony battery of an officer after a plain clothes officer attempted to shove him out of the Mayor’s suite.
The office of the ANSWER Coalition, which played a central role in planning and carrying-out the action, has been open all night providing support to those that were arrested, and will be a collection point for those that are able to donate bail money. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CALL 505-268-2488.
The sit-in comes just four days after an autopsy report confirmed what video evidence already proved; that Albuquerque police shot James Boyd, a homeless man who struggled with mental illness, in the back. Boyd’s killing was the straw that broke the camel’s back, sparking the three-month wave of action and organizing against the epidemic of abuse by APD and refusal of the politicians and courts to take action.
This determined act of protest was covered by all Albuquerque news outlets, and calls are coming in from all over the United States.
At the press conference held outside the Mayor’s office, Mike Gomez, father of Alan Gomez, who was shot in the back and killed by APD in 2011, said: “We need answers and the police chief and the mayor does not give them to us—they hide, they hire people to do their talking for them. Where was the Mayor for eight days after James Boyd was shot? He couldn’t face anybody because he’s a coward.”
Celina Trujeque, an organizer with ANSWER New Mexico, told the press: “Enough is enough! We demand that Mayor Barry issue an immediate condemnation of the current lynch mob tactics and strategies of the APD. We demand that the Mayor call publicly for the arrest, trial, and incarceration of killer cops.
“Instead of wining and dining wealthy business executives, the Mayor must stand up for all our city, including those most vulnerable and most often victimized by brutal and violent cops, including homeless people, Black, Latino, Native people and those suffering from mental illness.”
Jewell Hall, President of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center Task Force on Public Safety, said in a statement “The problem is bigger than just the police department. Much of the problem with APD stems from decades of racism, oppression and violence toward poor people and communities of color.”
Mayor Berry has refused to use the authority of his political office to take any meaningful action to address the pattern of police violence. He has also refused to meet speak with the community at every turn.
The press conference was followed by a picket in solidarity with the sit-in. This protest was a reflection of the determination of the people to forward the movement to end police brutality in Albuquerque and to hold accountable the officers who committed these acts of violence.
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