Child assassin Oliver–Murdered a straight-A student. Photo: Facebook
[Speaking Truth To Power]
Last Saturday, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards was shot and killed in Balch Springs, Texas by Officer Roy Oliver who fired into the car in which Edwards was riding and as is typical lied about the murder until a video exposed him.
Edwards, a top student and athlete with a future clearly more promising than his killer’s had decided to leave a teenage party he considered was getting too rowdy.
How many teenagers have such foresight?
As the Trump White House and Attorney General Jeff Sessions continue to give us lectures about “law and order,” America’s police continue to kill Black Americans with impunity, and these immoral folk say nothing. If we’re serious about stopping this bloodletting, Black Americans must rise up forcefully and do everything in our power to stop racist police from constantly killing and getting away with it.
Would Officer Oliver dare to shoot randomly into any vehicle he knew was carrying White individuals? Of course not –his prejudiced mindset presumed he could kill first and then manufacture a narrative that exonerated him.
After all that’s how it’s always done. Black lives don’t matter.
According to family attorney, Lee Merritt, Edwards “was leaving a house party because he thought it was getting dangerous,” due to reportedly drunk unsupervised teens. Reportedly, the police were even dispatched to the party.
After Edwards’ murder, at first, police released a statement saying the car drove backward “in an aggressive manner” towards officers; and police claimed verbal commands were directed at the car’s occupants.
Then by Monday Police Chief Jonathan Haber had to walk these false claims back saying “I unintentionally, incorrectly said the vehicle was backing down the road. According to the video, the vehicle was moving forward as the officer approached. After reviewing the video, I don’t believe that [the officer’s conduct] met our core values.”
How could his initial utterances have been unintentional? They were based on the lies of police officers so therefore intentional.
By Tuesday night, the Balch Springs Police Department announced Oliver, who had been on the force for six years, had been fired. In a statement they said the department had “determined” Oliver “violated several departmental policies.” They declined to comment on the specifics of those “policies.”
Edwards was a “straight-A student and said to have been well like by everyone. He was apparently also an avid athlete and popular freshman in the Mesquite Independent School District. This was a bright-eyed young man determined to make an impact on the world. He was not going to let some mishap at a rowdy party derail his dreams.
Ironically had he stayed at the party he would have deprived the killer cop the opportunity of robbing him of his most precious possession — his life.
Edwards’ coaches and community leaders attended a press conference where they demanded answers and in a statement called him “a good student who was very well liked by his teachers, coaches, and his fellow students.” One of his teammates said Edwards was “the best running back I ever played with.”
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price told reporters he wasn’t surprised the video exposed Officer Oliver to be a liar. “Usually they always do. But the video—it’s not new,” Price said. “It doesn’t make a difference whether it was in Louisiana, the Carolinas, in Texas; it’s the same. What’s changed? We’ve said that for years.”
Merritt stressed there was no reason for Oliver to shoot into the car. “There can be, there is no, there will be no justification,” Merritt said. “We are declaring war on bad policing. This is happening far too often.”
Oliver fired because he places no value on Black lives. That such killings continue to occur routinely suggest that the level of bottled hatred is pervasive. So you can also imagine the intensity of the bottled resentment.
There will be more fires next time.
Merritt is right about “declaring war” on racist American policing. We can no longer pretend this is just a problem of a “few bad apples.” American policing is a historically racist institution that has always brutalized Black people, from its inception. If we are to change it, we must face the fact that America’s police departments were not created “to protect and serve” Black people.
They started out as “slave patrols.” To some White officers Black neighborhoods are still plantations and young African American males are “boys.”
Police Chief Haber has been hailef for firing Oliver. Quickly forgotten is that Haber initially did what police usually do when an innocent Black person is killed: he reflexively repeated Officer Oliver’s false narrative before the video offered the truth. Why didn’t Haber do his homework before hed delivered the initial account? Or did someone forget to destroy the video?
Moreover, the firing of this trigger-happy killer-cop came about because of community pressure. The involvement of Jordan’s teachers and coaches helped. All wanted to know why this promising young man was killed in such a reckless manner. Chief Haber, like most police officials, prosecutors and politicians, tried to cover-up the criminal conduct of Oliver.
Balch Springs Police Department must release the video in the spirit of transparency and trust. They wouldn’t conceal video from the public if a Black person killed a cop. Does the video include audio that the police don’t want us to hear? Concealing videos further erodes trust between Black America and the police.
In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel learned that lesson the hard way when city officials decided to cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald, by Officer Jason Van Dyke.
Here is another question: do these “upstanding” folk think firing Oliver is really enough? Is that how cheap and worthless Black lives are viewed by these supposed advocates of the “rule of law?”
This murderer must be indicted and prosecuted to the “fullest extent of the law”; especially because he wore a badge while he unjustly took a life. Maximum prosecution follows on the rare occasion when a cop is killed by a Black person. The approach must be the same for cops who kill Blacks unarmed innocent Black folk.
There are calls for the Justice Department to investigate this case. But can Black Americans seriously expect justice from the Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department?
Sessions just declined to prosecute the Louisiana killer-cops, Officer Howie Lake and Officer Blane Salamoni, who were captured on video killing Alton Sterling in cold-blood. In spite of the overwhelming evidence showing their criminality, Sessions sees no evil here.
He puts himself in those officers’ shoes and sees no violations of civil rights, no criminality in their actions. Black males aren’t safe from bad cops in Sessions America.
But why should this be surprising given the well-known views Sessions harbors towards Black America? The fact that he’s even attorney general confirms that a large segment of the American public shares his views.
The lies are so routine that they are nauseating.
The Louisiana officers as with Texas’ Oliver also tried to conceal evidence. First, there is the dubious tale they both told about losing their body-cams, at basically the same time. Of course, they didn’t expect they were being videotaped by other sources, just as South Carolina Officer Michael Slager didn’t know he was being videotaped by Feidin Santana, when he was pumping bullets into Walter Scott’s back.
At least two people were bullied and harassed by police because of their roles relating to the murder by cop video of Alton Sterling. Abdullah Muhlafi, owner of the Triple S Mart outside where Sterling was first confronted by police, actually filed a lawsuit against Baton Rouge Police Department who he said confiscated his phone and “entire store security system.” He maintained police seized his property, although he asked them to get a warrant first. He also alleged he was locked in a police car for four hours.
Chris LeDay posted video of these officers murdering Sterling on social media. Around 24 hours after he posted that video, LeDay was arrested after arriving at his job in Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, several hundred miles away from where Sterling was killed. LeDay said he was first told he “fit the description” of an assault suspect. He was then arrested for outstanding parking tickets.
Recall the ordeal in New York of Ramsey Orta, who filmed the lynch-hold killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island by Daniel Pantaleo. Orta is the only person related to the Eric Garner outrage that is in prison on unrelated gun charges. The man responsible for Garner’s death, Pantaleo, actually got a pay raise in the years after he took Garner’s life and earns $120,000 and continues to enjoy life.
The institutional police racism that constantly takes the lives of Black Americans is surely fully endorsed by White America’s leaders. All the evidence shows this.
For how long will this be tolerated?
