TheAgitator.com
Shem Walker, Drug War Casualty
Monday, July 20th, 2009Last week, an undercover New York City police officer participating in a drug buy shot and killed 49-year-old Shem Walker during an altercation at Walker’s home in Brooklyn. Police say Walker, described by family and neighbors as an ex-con who had reformed, apparently thought the officer was a drug dealer or a vagrant. When the officer didn’t respond to Walker’s verbal demand to leave his property, apparently because he was wearing earphones to monitor the drug buy, Walker tried to forcibly remove him from Walker’s front stoop. The two got into an altercation. A second undercover officer then joined the fight, at which point the first officer shot and killed Walker.
The tension escalated Thursday when Walker’s family held a vigil on the same porch several days later. The family says that as they gathered, an NYPD officer pulled up and demanded identification. When several members refused, the officer called for backup. More officers arrived, and the vigil eventually erupted into shouting and shoving between the family and police. Police and family accounts obviously differ on who or what instigated the shoving. But it seems like a bad idea to send an officer to demand ID from participants in a vigil honoring an unarmed man who was killed by police just days earlier. Or, for that matter, putting undercover drug cops on private property in the first place.
Walker’s death is reminiscent of the Isaac Singletary incident in Florida from a couple of years ago. Singletary was shot and killed by undercover officers conducting a drug buy on his front lawn. He had confronted the officers with a rifle, thinking they were drug dealers. Those officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. Singletary’s family has filed a lawsuit.
“Those officers were cleared of any wrongdoing. Singletary’s family has filed a lawsuit.”
Same old refrain.
What a mess. Why did it not occur to either officer to maybe it’s better to lose your undercover status than to shoot an innocent bystander? The officer who showed up during the vigil needs to be tarred, feathered, and then fired, what an idiot.
doh, “to” means “that” in this one instance
How’s this for a general guideline for undercover officers:
As an undercover officer, you can’t do anything that any other average joe on the street can’t do. That means no powers of arrest, and no firearms(if you’re in a city like NYC, where handguns are essentially banned amongst the general population). If arrests need to be made, then there should be uniformed police officers laying in wait.
That sounds far too sensible.
Tokin “The officer who showed up during the vigil needs to be tarred, feathered, and then fired, what an idiot.”
Yea but thats not mere idiocy, thats just cruelty and arrogance, knowing damn well they can go out and persecute innocent grieving family members and get away with it. Its just mean as hell and seems to be pretty typical these days.
Lessons learned in life:
1) Politicians lie.
2) Taxes always increase
3) Police are never, ever, ever wrong
“Those officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.”
sorry to curse on your blog Radley…
I am so fucking sick of that fucking response every time a cop fucks up. Why the fuck do they even bother with the investigation?
“Unarmed man shot for no apparent reason by traffic cop”
“We’d investigate, but we know the officer probably didn’t do anything wrong- no sense continuing this ‘internal investigation’ charade.”
http://www.smh.com.au/national/taser-set-petrol-sniffer-ablaze-police-20090721-drf0.html
The regularity of these events is depressing and mind-numbing. I cannot say anything about the conduct of the police that has not been said a thousand times before on this website.
My condolences to the family of Mr Walker. May they have the strength to see them through this tragedy.
Thanks for your good work.
I’m sure you’d get to it shortly, but here is a story about how Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by Cambridge MA police. Since I’m not a regular reader, apologies if you’ve already posted on the incident.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528584
“Why did it not occur to either officer that maybe it’s better to lose your undercover status than to shoot an innocent bystander?”
Because statistics on arrests and convictions are obviously more important than the lives of innocent bystanders.
Another undercover officer nearby said the cop called, “Police! Freeze!” Civilian witnesses heard only calls to “freeze.”
Funny how those darn civilians always hear something different than they’re supposed to, isn’t it?
So I read the comments section of some of the series of Shem Walker articles at the Daily News, and then read the comments section of the Boston Globe article about the Gates incident, and above and beyond the stories themselves I am once again struck by the sheer number of Americans who consider themselves the fucking slaves of the police.
It’s shocking.
“You deserve to be arrested if you’re rude to a police officer” and “Police are entitled to be anywhere, anytime, doing anything they want, including on your porch while wearing a disguise” seem to be majority sentiments in the US today. And all of the cringing, bowing, scraping serfs who think this way resent anyone who doesn’t; it’s like they say, “The cops broke my spirit long ago, and it’s a personal insult to me if Walker or Gates doesn’t have a broken spirit too.”
There are a couple very telling parts to this story, and not by family members or witnesses, but the cops themselves.
“Mr. Walker had hit the 36-year-old officer several times on the head and told him to get off the stoop, a police spokesman said.”
BULLSHIT! Anytime you see a statement where the officer was hit several times, and then told to do something, you know the cops are telling lies.
Mr. Browne said the second undercover officer then grabbed Mr. Walker from behind by the shoulders, but he shrugged him off.
BULLSHIT! We have all seen way to many videos of cops in action. When the second officer would have grabbed him it would have been a full force tackle, attempting to take him to the ground, and begin some real abuse.
When you need to lie,cheat,steal and trespass to arrest people for drugs it shows the laws need changing.
Things like this are why we need to get rid of professional police departments and return to the posse comitatus. Libertarians like to sound moderate on the issue by saying that policing is an issue which the state should be doing, but we’re seeing clearly that it is not something it can handle. That is why we need to go back to a law enforcement system based on a purely civilian approach where the Sheriff, his deputies and the general public are responsible for law enforcement.
These two posts are a good overview of why professional police are incompatible with a free society:
Part 1
Part 2
My father, who was in law enforcement for 27 years, had a better method of punishing police who knowingly hurt the public. Shave their head, tatoo “I WAS A PIG” to their forehead and throw them into general lock up.
Another day, another person murdered by drug warriors.
I’m somewhat disturbed that events as brutally evil as these no longer rouse my emotions.
Good thing that officer was there, some one could have been getting high and who would be there to stop them?
Death is a perfectly acceptable sentence for questioning the wisdom of our betters.
I love Big Brother.
Times like these call for men like Jim Bell.
“officers were cleared of any wrongdoing.””
Because we’ve decided that officers have a license to kill. hence, no wrongdoing.
Why is police work the only job with no accountability? In all these stories we read on this blog, even if you take at face value everything the cops say, shouldn’t their be some accountability if their actions result in the loss of innocent life?
If I make a mistake at work that costs my company $5,000, I’m (rightly) fired. No “investigation” to see the circumstances surrounding my mistake and no chance to save my job. Cop makes a mistake that costs a life, gets paid leave while the incident is investigated, then gets cleared and put back on the job. Why can’t even the most gung-ho law & order type not realize that people trusted with leathal force and arresting power should be MORE accoutable than somebody like me in finance?
cynic-
Jim Bell He is expecting release in September 2009, per wiki. I predict a life sentence based on trumped up charges to be given sometime in December…
Thanks for the update Marty. I will be following with interest.
God’s Own Drunk–
I think most of your questions only need one answer, police officers are union members.
@ Michael Pack #16: “When you need to lie,cheat,steal and trespass to arrest people for drugs it shows the laws need changing.”
Exactly. This can be applied to other “vice” pursuits.
Arglebardgle: “God’s Own Drunk–
I think most of your questions only need one answer, police officers are union members.”
Then there’s also the fact that they are a “brotherhood”, which transcends any sort of legal unionization. You always protect your kin over strangers, right? That’s the dangerous mentality.