Tag: police officer

Shem Walker, I wasn’t at the community meeting last night, but I am upset

I ran into Rev. Dyson this morning.  As I was walking past his church, he was taking down the fliers about last nights community meeting about the death of Shem Walker, the man who was shot on his front stoop by undercover cops disguised as drug dealers.  Reverend Dyson said the family was  at the meeting with Letitia James, our City Council representative and members of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care and representatives from local police precincts.  Mr. Walker’s daughters were there, one of them full military uniform.  She’s shipped out this morning for her second tour in Iraq.  It’s heartbreaking.

This man was trying to chase the drug dealers off his elderly mother’s front stoop.  He grew up in that house but he didn’t live there anymore.  He lived in Pennsylvania and returned to Brooklyn frequently to visit and help his mother.  

This man was killed in July.  The police officer who shot him in the chest at point blank range has not been identified.  The video from the survelance camera on the store across the street has dissappeared.

Apparently the police department and the DA have an agreement to cover up the deaths of innocent bystanders, like Shem Walker, when there aren’s many witnesses, as collateral damage, a necessary evil in the fight against crime.  The longer they can keep it quiet, the easier it will be to keep it covered up.

This is horrifying!

Black men close to home

I have so much faith in Obama that I think the whole Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest fiasco will be cleared up when the police officer, the professor and the President of the United States have a beer together at the White House. 

There is no such hope for Shem Walker, a man I never met, who was shot to death by a cop on his own stoop 12 blocks from where I live in Brooklyn.  He is my neighbor.

Undercover cops dressed as drug dealers loitering on the stoop of Mr Walker’s elderly mother.  Mr. Walker told them to move.   They did not respond.  So he pushed them off his elderly mother’s stoop.  That’s when one of the undercover cops fatally shot Mr. Walker in the chest.  Mr Walker died.  The undercover cop required two stitches.

These two scenarios have been playing out in my imagination for days.