Anthony Anderson, Tyrone West, George King. In Baltimore, these are our “Mike Browns.” Now, at a time of focused national attention on incidents of police brutality in other parts of the country, a group of mothers and relatives of Black men lost to police violence called for a rally to focus attention on police brutality here in Baltimore.
Darlene Cain founder of “Mothers on the Move.”
Darlene Cain lost her son Dale Graham in 2008 at the hands of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). After years working to overcome her grief, she founded Mothers on the Move, a support group for women who, like her, have lost children to police brutality or have had loved ones suffer abuse at the hands of police.
At a time when police brutality is a primary topic of conversation in Baltimore as well as nationally, Cain had planned to hold a rally on the issue when she heard from similar organizations in San Diego and Texas that they would be holding rallies on Oct. 22, in order to preserve attention on police brutality in their communities.
“I was told that it was going to be a national day, and because Baltimore is always supporting other states, I said why don’t we support us, where we live?” said Cain about her decision to organize a rally here in Baltimore on the same day as part of the National Mothers Against Police Brutality Day. “We’re having police brutality here in Baltimore so it would be good if show up for their own city.”
For Cain, this rally in front of City Hall is ultimately about accountability to the families of police brutality victims.
“Lawyers are telling us things like they can’t take the case to court. You keep hearing the same old lines over and over again, ‘we thought he had a weapon,’ ‘he lunged after the officer,’ ‘I thought he was reaching for a gun,’and I just can’t believe that every individual who got shot and killed by police, that this is the same thing.”
Marcella Hollaman founded Justify BMore after her son, Maurice Johnson, was murdered by Baltimore police in her own home in 2012, in order to help persons who have loved lost ones to police brutality pursue legal remedies at the federal level.
Hollaman wants to see action on the brutality that has become far too common in most of Baltimore’s neighborhoods.
“I’m not the only mother who has witnessed her child being killed in the home,” said Hollaman. “In Baltimore it’s a common thing, they killed a lot of people in front of their family.”
Tawanda Jones lost her brother, Tyrone West, to police brutality on July 18, 2013 and has been organizing weekly Wednesday protests since the one year anniversary of his death this year. She is also a founder of the West Coalition, which has been seeking the use of body cameras by the BPD in hopes that the cameras would minimize instances of police brutality as well as chip away at the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights, which many in the city feel protects officers from being accountable for any abusive actions in the field.
Jones says she wants to work to ensure that what she experienced is never again the fate of any other family in Baltimore City, and that residents need greater protections against police violence than the sort of official review by an independent board that was the extent of what her family received in the aftermath of West’s murder.
“That report was basically another slap in the face because all that happened in that review board was they basically regurgitated what the officers first said, so that was nowhere in my brother’s of getting the truth.”
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake recently announced the formation of a working group to study the potential implementation of a body camera program for police officers in the city of Baltimore, and on Oct. 23, a state working group was to begin meetings on the implementation of body cameras for police in Maryland.
ralejandro@afro.com