As reported by the Washington Post, 35-year-old Robert Gross, resident of Virginia and the District, was shot to death by a Metro Transit Police officer during the evening of March 12, 2015. The incident took place in the tunnel near the Potomac Avenue metro station. A Blue Line train operator heading toward Virginia spotted Robert Gross in the tunnel and called Transit Police. Three officers went into the tunnel to investigate but Gross was confronted by only one officer who shot him multiple times.
The officer in question, described only as a woman with at least ten years experience on the Metro Transit Police Force, has been put on paid administrative leave. Robert Gross is described as troubled. At the time of the shooting he was barefoot, wearing no pants and carrying a tree branch. While three paragraphs were used in the Washington Post article to describes Gross’ criminal history using records from 2008, only one paragraph was used to describe his family life.
The following night, Friday, March 13, DC Ferguson met at Chinatown, got on the Metro, then got off at U st to block the intersection of 14th and U streets. The following video was provided by Luke reporting for the DC Independent Media Center.
All Soul’s is near the Columbia Heights Metro (Green/Yellow). The meeting will be upstairs in the Tupper Room. Ron Thomas, the AV expert in Raphael Briscoe’s case will be joining us to show & discuss the infamous footage that shows the police shooting Briscoe in the back and then planting a gun on his body. The cops in were exonerated even after admitting in court they planted the BB gun on Briscoe. Last night’s shooting of two police officers in Ferguson will also be on the agenda. For further reading see Origins of the Police by David Whitehouse.
Last Friday I posted an event “Rally and March for Raphael Briscoe.” Having very little information about Raphael Briscoe, I did a quick Google search and proceeded to cross-post the first article I found which was from Homicide Watch DC. The article stated that Raphael was the third person killed by police in 2011. The other two were reportedly killed after a shoot-out with police following a botched robbery attempt. The article said nothing about how or why Raphael was killed by the police. Today, I did a little more research. Here’s what I found.
WJLA did report the story the day of the shooting. Below is the video they posted on their website. It’s worth watching, not for the information about Raphael Briscoe, but for all of the information that’s left out.
If the above video isn’t working CLICK HERE to watch the video on WJLA’s site.
According to the WJLA report, Briscoe had a gun. In fact, he had a BB gun, which is not quite the same as a regular gun that fires lead bullets at 2,500 feet per second. They also failed to report that Briscoe was shot in the back in the act of running from the police. To their credit, WJLA did report on their website a follow-up report with more details, but I couldn’t find any evidence that this report ever made it to television.
WASHINGTON, DC (WJLA), April 26, 2011 –Police Chief Cathy Lanier said officers with the Gun Recovery Unit confronted an adult male with a gun. An officer or officers fired on the suspect after the situation escalated. The suspect was struck at least once.
The suspect was identified as 18-year-old Rafael Briscoe of Southeast.
Lanier on Wednesday said the weapon the suspect pulled out was a BB gun. She said she has seen the gun and there was no way, under similar circumstances, that officers could have known it wasn’t a real gun.
The officer involved in the shooting has been placed on leave.
Witnesses said the shooting episode started in the Forrest Ridge Apartment complex. They described the victim as a “good kid.”
WUSA did a far better job, reporting not only that the gun wasn’t real, but also that Briscoe was shot after running from the police. In reality, he was running from an unmarked police car full of heavily-armed white men with guns.
WUSA’s website report had even more details …
WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA), April 27, 2011 — A day after an 18-year old man was killed by police in a Southeast DC neighborhood residents there continue to demand answers.
DC Police confirm a plain clothes officer shot and killed 18-year old Rafael Briscoe after he ran from them along the 2400 block of Elvans Rd., Southeast, Tuesday afternoon. The officer was part of an undercover detail known as the Gun Recovery Unit, a group of officers tasked with taking guns off the streets. Investigators say a BB gun resembling a real handgun was found on Briscoe.
The shooting has sparked outrage among community members who held a vigil for Briscoe Wednesday evening. Neighbors who live in the area are now turning their frustration at the police, claiming Briscoe was shot in the back and never threatened the officer.
Cherie Smith, Briscoe’s grandmother, said, “The police senselessly shot and killed my grandson, and they are making up all kinds of excuses for them doing it.”
DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier will only say the incident is under a full investigation. On Wednesday she said, “In any instance when we have use of force, especially deadly force that’s a serious matter and we’ll make sure that it’s handled properly.”
The events of the shooting were captured by a police surveillance camera along Elvans Rd. 9NEWS NOW has officially requested a copy of the surveillance video from DC Police.
It took four years and a lawsuit by the ACLU before surveillance video of the incident would materialize. WNBC reports on the case as it has developed after the policeman who killed Raphael Briscoe was cleared of all charges.
As is not uncommon, the text-based version of the story on WNBC’s website had more, and perhaps more incendiary details. Including, the knowledge that Raphael did not turn towards the car that was following him in the surveillance video, which calls into question reports that he brandished the offending bb gun at the police who pursued him.
WASHINGTON, DC (WNBC), February 23, 2015 –A jury cleared Metropolitan Police Department officers in the shooting death of a D.C. teen four years ago.
Rafael Briscoe, 18, was shot and killed in April 2011 in the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE after police say he brandished a weapon.
MPD surveillance video shows the former track star running from an unmarked D.C. police car filled with officers. Lawyers for the police department said the teen was seen carrying a gun, while Briscoe’s family lawyer, Billy Ponds, said what police are interpreting as a weapon is simply his finger and his cell phone.
Neither side disputes a single, fatal shot was then fired from the unmarked police car, but Ponds said a BB gun was thrown from the car toward Briscoe’s body. Still images taken from the crime scene show the gun broken in two pieces.
“[The video] did not depict Rafael turning toward the [car]. I’m astounded and ashamed by the outcome in the case,” Ponds said.
Briscoe’s mother Bridzette Lane Friday vowed to keep fighting to defend her son.
“Looking at the video, it was a drive-by on him,” Lane said. “So I’m just angry. I’m very, very angry. I’m not going to stop until justice is served for my son.”
The American Civil Liberties Union is using Briscoe’s death to call for an end to MPD’s long-used anti-crime tactic known as “jump out squads.” Monica Hopkins-Maxwell, the head of D.C.’s ACLU, told News4 the unmarked cars police use in similar cases should be clearly marked.
D.C. police released the following statement Friday afternoon:
“Plain clothes and undercover police operations are used by MPD for multiple purposes such as investigating robberies, burglaries, drug, prostitution, and gun offenses. They are not targeted at any particular community, but are used to address crime problems and citizen complaints.”
The D.C. Attorney General’s Office is preparing a statement.
WNBC’s television report is far more complete than the stories produced by WJLA or WUSA back in 2011, but even this report leaves out an important perspective–that of the part of the community that’s organizing against the police jump outs that killed Raphael Briscoe. To get that side of the story, we turn to the DC Independent Media Center.
DC Ferguson marches on 7th District police station
Submitted by Luke on Sunday, February 22, 2015
On the 22nd of February, DC Ferguson met at the Congress Heights Metro in Anacostia and marched on the 7th District police station. Protesters were demanding justice for Ralphael Briscoe, who was shot in the back by a police “jump-out” squad back in 2011 without having even been suspected of having committed a crime. The shooting was described by one speaker as being a “drive-by.” As usual, the police involved in this murder have been cleared of all charges and returned to duty. DC Ferguson is demanding that these murderers be punished and that police jump-out tactics be ended in DC forever.
Video recently emerged of the Ralphael Briscoe shooting and has been cited as proof that police jump-outs exist in DC. At first MPD tried to claim to have discontinued the use of jump-outs 15 years ago, now they try to claim this is only the “vice squad” in the face of flat out proof that jump-out tactics are in use. One speaker asked “if jump-outs don’t exist, how come everyone in DC’s African-American neighborhoods knows exactly what they are?”
#DCFerguson will hold a rally, 6pm, February 22 at the Congress Heights Metro Station in Washington DC and March to the 7th District Police Station. The purpose of the rally is to bring more awareness to the “Jump Outs” a military style tactical unit within the Metropolitan Police Department.
Justice for Raphael Briscoe Rally & March Congress Heights Metro Station February 22, 6:00 PM
#DCFerguson continues to stand in solidarity with the Ralphael Briscoe family and the sisters and brothers that are continuing to protest and resist the police murders of Black and Latino people every 28 hours in America.
ANSWER Coalition organizer Eugene Puryear says,”The murder of Rafael Briscoe should be a turning point. Where we finally come to terms with the root causes of these issues and address social deprivation and oppression and the police brutality that comes with it.”
The initial sponsors of #DCFerguson include the National Black United Front, the ANSWER Coalition, We Act Radio, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the American Muslim Alliance, as well as independent organizing networks that have sprung up in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing.
If you haven’t heard of Raphael Briscoe, here’s some background information.
Rafael Briscoe Third Person to be Killed by Officers in D.C. this Year
Cross-posted from Homicide Watch DC April 27, 2011
Rafael Briscoe of Southeast, DC, who was killed Tuesday afternoon by D.C.Metropolitan Police officers, is the third person to die in a D.C. officer involved shooting this year. On Feb 13, Davon Sealy, 19, of Gaithersburg, and Akeem Jamaal Cayo, 21, were fatally shot in a shoot-out with officers after a botched home invasion robbery.
MPD’s protocol for deadly use of force is here. A good discussion of the use of deadly force, it’s impacts and how communities respond is on the FBI’s website, here. That document describes the general tension surrounding officer-involved fatal shootings as follows:
Some members of the public seem to automatically assume that the officer did something wrong before any investigation into the incident begins. Conversely, others believe that if the police shot somebody, the individual must not have given the officer any choice.
“…there is not a great American city from New York to Cleveland or Detroit, from Washington, the nation’s capital, to Chicago, from Memphis to Atlanta or Birmingham, form New Orleans to Los Angeles, that is not disgraced by the wanton killing of innocent Negroes.” – We Charge Genocide (1951)
On December 3rd of 2014, Daniel Pantaleo, the white NYPD officer responsible for the murder of Eric Garner, a middle-aged Black male resident of NYC, was not indicted for Garner’s murder by a grand jury overseeing the proceedings of the case. Given the recent history of massive protests in opposition to police brutality and anti-Black violence across the country, a wave of protests decrying the grand jury’s decision was inevitable.
Due in large part to the accessibility of information in today’s world, thanks to social media websites such as Twitter, people across the country, and even the globe, are showing solidarity to activists on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement.
This said, before the Black Lives Matter movement shifted a broader lens on the issue of police violence in Black communities, two organizations, the Stolen Lives Project and the October 22 Coalition, have been active in challenging anti-Black police violence for decades.
The Stolen Lives Project, whose mission, as quoted from their website, is “to assemble a national list of people killed by law enforcement agents from 1990 to the present.”, has documented over two-thousand cases of people killed by police officers, publishing this information in a book in 1999. While acknowledging the fact that the two-thousand cases they’ve documented are a small fraction of the number of people killed by police officers, the goals of the project are twofold; to maintain evidence of the epidemic of extrajudicial killings in the United States, and to preserve the dignity of those whose deaths would have been swept beneath the rug to maintain the myth of a policing system untainted by corruption.
Active since 1966, the October 22 Coalition began as the brainchild of various people engaged in radical politics during the 60’s. Working in tandem with the Stolen Lives Project, the Coalition helps organize those seeking to take part in the National Day of Protest. A mass database of resources and points of contact for those wanting to get involved in protest against police violence, the Coalition seeks to bring together “those under the gun and those not under the gun as a powerful voice to expose the epidemic of police brutality.”.
As exemplified by two organizations mentioned above, police violence in Black communities is not a new occurrence; however, neither is resistance.
