Pubdate: Thu, 11 Dec 2014
Source: Trentonian, The (NJ)
Column: Passing the Joint
Copyright: 2014 The Trentonian
Contact:  http://www.trentonian.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006
Author: Edward Forchion, NJWeedman.com For The Trentonian

TAMIR RICE KILLING SADLY REMINISCENT OF 1994 GLASSBORO KILLING

I'm proud of the Ferguson protesters  in most communities, people of 
color say nothing.

A bunch of my white weed-smoking activist friends on Facebook are 
upset with me for talking about Ferguson and the national race issue 
it inspired. They're unfriending me in droves, and I myself have 
unfriended childhood friends.

"Are you the reeferman or the raceman?" read one message.

Our realities are so different, they are immune from my plight, which 
is why I see Ferguson as my fight too.

My white counterparts in the marijuana-legalization movement can take 
off their tie-dyed shirts and stop talking about weed whenever they 
want, and just be white guys. No matter how much weed we smoke, I, 
and brothers like me, are always Black men first.

I've protested the racial aspect of Amerikkka long before I dealt 
with the weed aspect of our racist War on Drugs. My first protest 
ever was about race: As the riots raged in Los Angeles in the spring 
of 1992, my brother and I (both fresh out of the U.S. Army and living 
in Glassboro, NJ) went to Philadelphia and joined the hundreds of 
people who gathered at City Hall to protest the L.A. "good ol' 
boy-in-blue network" that acquitted the police abusers.

The next time was two years later (1994) in Glassboro, over an 
incident that reminds me of the recent Tamir Rice police murder in 
Cleveland. Like other Black Glassboro residents, I went to protest 
the murder of Sammy (Eltarmine) Saunders, a 14-year-old Black kid, by 
Glassboro Police Officer Peter Amico.

How it happened: Sammy and his cousin Darrell were fighting. Sammy's 
mother called 911 because she couldn't break it up. I lived just a 
few hundred yards from the Saunders and knew the family. Our houses 
were around the corner from the police station, so two police cars 
showed up in moments. As the police pulled up, 14-year-old Sammy was 
outside chasing his 17-year-old cousin Darrell with a knife. Officer 
Amico gets out of his car and shoots Sammy in cold blood, similar to 
how Cleveland Officer Timothy Loehmann recently shot Tamir Rice on video.

Of course Officer Amico then made the scripted "get outta jail for 
killing someone" statements that we're all used to hearing: (1) "He 
lunged at me"; (2) "I feared for my life"; (3) "I shot in 
self-defense"; (4) "He died of drugs, not my actions." These 
statements are like the "get out of jail free" card in Monopoly. Cops 
say these, and the secret grand juries agree.

Officer Amico, a six-year veteran officer at that time, played three 
of these cards. He said Sammy lunged at him with a knife almost as 
soon as he stepped from his patrol car; he feared for his life, and 
he shot once in self-defense.

Neither Darrell nor Ms. Saunders backed that story up; both said the 
opposite  Sammy didn't even acknowledge the officer because he was 
too busy chasing Darrell. They claimed Officer Amico's story was a 
total fabrication.

It quickly became a black vs. white issue. The local black people, 
including me, rallied against this police murder. The white locals 
held parties and "fund-raisers" for the officer. Whites justified the 
incident as Sammy's fault, blaming the black victim as usual. While 
the blacks said, if the kid were white the cop wouldn't have murdered 
him. White lives matter to cops, blacks lives don't  we are always 
regarded as criminals first to many cops.

A secret Gloucester County grand jury was convened and as usual the 
black eyewitness testimony was discounted and Amico's - Pinocchio's - 
rendition was gladly accepted hook, line, and sinker. Blacks learned 
decades ago: When it's a matter of black vs. white, the system will 
almost always see that white is right.

To be clear, I never thought Officer Amico woke up that morning and 
decided to murder someone, but neither do most of the murderers in 
prison now. But he did it. The guys in prison were charged and 
prosecuted. Was it deliberate? Sure, he shot center mass, no warning, 
no baton to the head or other nonlethal method, just a deadly shot to 
the chest that I hope he has nightmares about. Probably not, though - 
he and his white supporters had a grand picnic party before the grand 
jury convened. Many of those testifying for him attended his party. 
Amico's actions were whitewashed under the hood of the grand jury.

To add insult to injury, the police practically danced on Sammy's 
grave. Amico was nominated for and accepted an award  from the 
Gloucester County Police Awards Committee. The Combat Cross is given 
to officers who've been in combat with an armed adversary.

This to me meant Black lives or opinions didn't matter. Black people 
of Glassboro took it as sanctioned murder, and a celebration of a 
murder done well. Reading these words 20 years later still makes me mad.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom