Black NJ demands accountability, from both the cops & Newark's celebrity mayor: "Justice for Basire Farrell"

This past May, Fire on the Mountain reported on the beating death by Newark police officers of popular Clinton Hills neighborhood resident Basire Farrell within blocks of Mayor Cory Booker's residence (see The People's Organization for Progress Demands Justice for Basire Farrell for the May posting). By August, in the heat of the summer of 2009, this year's spate of police-sanctioned murders has only increased…

The community response to this outrage became a flood of discontent as more than 100 residents, New Black Panther Party supporters, and People's Organization for Progress members shut down Newark's central business intersection at Broad & Market Streets this past Wednesday evening (see this video).

This weekend, after pointing out that we were picking the Newark Police Headquarters at 31 Green Street on a Saturday for the convenience of family members and working people, POP NJ State chairman Lawrence Hamm upped the ante, stating that next time, we would be around the corner from the Police Headquarters, "at City Hall on a week day, to confront Mayor Booker and the Police Commissioner, and demand a response."

As the leaflet from People's Organization for Progress stated:

We ask, are lives in Black skins less important than lives in white skins? We ask why is Basire Farrell's life in Black skin less important than a life in a white skin?
We ask, why Basire Farrell couldn't survice an arrest by Seven Newark Police Officers?
We ask, why was Basire Farrell added to the list of Blacks murdered by the Newark Police?

We also ask:

Why did it take seven police officers to arrest one man?
Why did the police need to chase Basire Farrell, and then hit him with a police car to stop him?
How was "public safety" served by beating and kicking a man who was already on the ground and in handcuffs?
Why was Basire Farrell repeated tasered (tortured with an illegal "non-lethal" weapon that the City of Newark does not even provide to officers), while in cuffs?

The death of Basire Farrell is simply a single example of an every-increasing number of homicides that police officers in Essex County are either directly responsible for or complicit in. These include Randy Weaver, Jahqui Graham, and many, many others.

Justice for all victims of Police Brutality!

(See a YouTube video of Chairman Hamm's speech this past Saturday at 31 Green Street in Newark)