NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9678

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From: [e-mail] (Workers World Service)
Subject: Salvadoran, Shot & Arrested by DC Cops, Freed
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Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


Arrested and shot by cops, Latino finally freed in DC

By Workers World Washington bureau

The trial of Daniel Gomez has ended with a deadlocked jury.
Gomez, a Salvadoran immigrant, was accused of assaulting two
police officers after one of them shot him--nearly fatally--on May
5, 1991. The prosecution has announced it will not ask for a
retrial.

The shooting of Gomez precipitated a major rebellion in the Latino
community of Mount Pleasant. It lasted three nights and spread to
the neighboring area of Adams Morgan. Many Black and white youths
joined in.

Word of the shooting, which took place during the Cinco de Mayo
celebration of the Mexican revolution, spread like wildfire
through the Latino community. The police were quickly outnumbered.

They were forced to run for their lives from the anger of the
masses, who have had so much first-hand experience of police
violence and brutality.

The rebellion had begun.

EYEWITNESSES CONTRADICT POLICE

Police had harassed Gomez and were in the process of arresting him
when they shot him. During the trial police claimed he had lunged
with a knife at one of them, who then shot him in self-defense.

The community, which witnessed the events first-hand, totally
rejected this version. Eyewitnesses came forward. They testified
that Gomez was handcuffed when he was shot, did not have a knife,
and did not lunge at the cop.

One eyewitness, Jorge Urizar, a Guatemalan man, said police tried
to get him to change his story. "You want me to change my mind?
I'm not," Urizar said he told police. "I am certain he was
handcuffed."

Asked whether Gomez had a knife, Urizar said: "That's a lie. They
tell me about a knife. I never saw a knife. Absolutely not."

The brutal treatment of Gomez after he was shot also became an
issue. He was held incommunicado for several days. Police refused
to tell his family whether he was dead or alive. Only when faced
with the possibility of a new rebellion did they finally relent
and allow the family to visit him.

During Gomez' long recuperation the police continued to harass
him in the hospital. They assigned one of the cops involved in
the original shooting incident to "guard" Gomez. Gomez' attorney
accused the police of "a deliberate attempt to intimidate him."

There was considerable anger in the Latino community over the
trial. Many expressed the view that the police should have been
on trial, not just for the attempted murder of Daniel Gomez but
also for their constant brutality and harassment directed against
Latinos.

In fact, the Latino community---not just Daniel Gomez--was on
trial. The case was really about resisting the police, and Daniel
Gomez came to symbolize this struggle.

He stood up to the police and defended himself as an individual,
just as thousands in the  community stood and collectively
defended themselves against the police by rebelling.

AFTERMATH OF REBELLION

After the rebellion, demands for community empowerment and
recognition, as well as for much-needed social services, were
raised. A sense of pride and strength pervaded Mount Pleasant
street--a sense of an historic move forward.

The trial was aimed at crushing this feeling. The city hoped to
show that resistance to the police does not pay, and that it will
be punished with a long jail term. The government's failure in
this respect means the Latino community's resistance has been
legally vindicated.

During the rebellion and the trial, the city administration tried
to divide the Black and Latino communities. Officials threatened
to cut programs in the Black community in order to meet the
demands for social services the Latino leadership was raising.

One city council member, while suggesting that Latinos should
"leave if they don't like it here," revealed that the Bush
administration had allowed the Immigration and Naturalization
Service to "screen" those arrested during the rebellion.

Pam Parker, a spokesperson for the All-Peoples Congress--which
has a long history of organizing local struggles against racism
and the Klan--told Workers World that both the Latino and Black
communities in D.C. have a history of resisting racism and police
brutality. "Half of those arrested on the second night of the
rebellion were Black youth, showing that it was truly a
multi-national rebellion," she said.

She continued, "The All-Peoples Congress, which fought the Klan
and the cops in the streets of D.C. in 1982 and 1989, calls for
the establishment of community boards which will control the
police, to have representation from all the nationalities which
compose this city, and  for an end to police violence and
brutality."

Parker added that the police have a long history of violence
against both the Black and Latino communities. "The APC sees a
similarity between the recent acquittal of the cops who brutally
beat Andrew Young's son and the trial of Daniel Gomez. Both
involved an act of criminal violence by the police, yet none of
the cops involved has been convicted of anything," she said.

Gomez, who is back at his old job in a restaurant washing dishes,
intends to continue the struggle. His attorneys have filed a
civil lawsuit against the police.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: [e-mail]; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "[e-mail]".)


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