Wake up, Bayview Hunters Point!

They dress alike, drive the same cars, some even have huge German Shepherds riding with them. They shoot to kill, and you’d better duck if you wanna live.

Run and hide, lock your doors but don’t pick up your phones! Cause it’s not the Crips you’ve got to be worried about – it ain’t Big Block, BNT, Oakdale, Kirkwood or West Mob either – it’s the SFPD.

Yeah, I said it and I’ll say it again. The San Francisco Police Department is a gang. They are liars, they are thieves, they are rapists, drug dealers and assassins, and they are paid to harass and terrorize the residents of our community. Whew, I feel better now.

I was once one of those brainwashed, innocent little kids who knew to call 9-1-1 when something went wrong. But now I know for a fact that calling 9-1-1 would be like inviting the devil to dinner – he’ll thank you for the invitation but he’s bound to wanna take you to hell (or 850 Bryant) with him so he can show you his own brand of hospitality. So now I just say no.

There ain’t no amount of stop, drop and roll that will shake police fire off you. They get their hands wrapped around the Black community and they squeeze until it bursts into flames.

Have we forgotten the Rodney King riots? Los Angeles exploded when videotaped footage of the LAPD beating a Black man was televised. Somehow, though, when the SFPD shoots and kills half a dozen young Black men, we just shake our heads. It is rarely televised and rarely reported in the local newspapers. But it’s happening, people, and you’d better wake up.

I’m not going to tell you that the police are the only problem here. Some key players in this mission to destroy the Bayview Hunters Point community are the ill-informed residents therein – the hypocrite holy rollers who smile at the altar but won’t speak in the street, the Black business owners who won’t even hire their own people, the parents who are too high or too self-involved to raise their own children and the village that turns its back on its elders. These people are of great help to the SFPD in their fight to destroy our community. If you see your name on this list: Check yourself.

Growing up in Bayview Hunters Point, I have seen many crimes committed – some drug deals and even some public intoxication. But never have I witnessed crimes as blatantly committed as those committed by the SFPD – false imprisonment, assault and battery, illegal search and seizure, home invasion, perjury. Shall I go on?

My friends and family has had their personal experiences with the police, but a few stick out in my mind. Just two years ago, my fiancé was coming out of a Third Street corner store on his way home from work when he was approached by narcotics officers. After unlawfully searching him and finding that he wasn’t carrying any drugs or weapons, they decided to run his name through the system.

While driving him through the Produce Market, they questioned him about crimes that he wasn’t even aware of and told him that they would let him out if he could “give them somebody.” They even threatened to drive through Potrero Hill pointing at people, labeling him a snitch. Then they would let him out at the top of Connecticut Street.

“I didn’t have nobody to give them … I don’t know nothing about nothing, unless it has to do with me or my family. I guess they didn’t do their research, because I’m not a gang banger. If they would’ve let me out in Potrero Hill, I would’ve said ‘what’s up’ (to my family) and kept going,” he recalls.

Their computer was searched for a third time and brought up the info they wanted. That night he was arrested on a warrant stemming from non-payment of a littering ticket. His bond was $12.50.

In another incident, my little brother was harassed and tossed around by Marina District police after leaving a club on Broadway. Muni had stopped running in the area, and after calling a friend for a ride and not getting an answer, he was contemplating a route home.

His only crime was asking, “Why should I move?” when officers “Dumb and Dumber” asked him to leave a bus stop bench. They told him, “Since you don’t want to move, we’ll play the ‘monkey game,’” and they proceeded to bruise his face and ego in plain view of other club-goers.

My brother has no criminal record, not even so much as a jaywalking ticket. That night, he learned never to question a cop.

The most notorious incident of all is MLK Day in 2002 when SFPD terrorized four teenagers at gunpoint. When the parents and shocked neighbors tried to intervene, the police threatened to shoot them.

They only made one arrest that night – 14-year-old Jerome King-Brown who spoke up to defend his little cousin. They beat him to near unconsciousness and then took him to the Bayview Police Station, trying to charge him with something like resisting arrest. When onlookers asked why the police were harassing these children, they were told, “As long as you people are here, we will act like this.”

Last month, on Sept. 9, one of the young men assaulted by cops that night, Tyrelle Taylor, now 18, was shot in the back and nearly killed by police while running from the scene of what the SFPD claim was an “assault on a police officer.”

According to a front page story in the Chronicle, Tyrelle had pointed a firearm at them. Apparently, he is not only a “gang member” but also a wizard, because in running from five or more officers, he was able to magically make this gun disappear.

Tyrelle was held on charges of attempted murder and assault on a police officer, brandishing a firearm and possession of an illegal firearm – which, believe it or not, was recovered days after the incident. Isn’t that convenient?

He was later charged with possession of marijuana and cocaine – both discovered while searching his mother’s home, not in his possession upon arrest.

Now, if you know the SFPD, you know they have this uncanny ability to find stuff at the most convenient moment. Unfortunately, this ability is always out of order when it comes to arresting suspects in the murders of the young Black men in our community.

Tyrelle mentioned to me that when he was booked, after spending just a couple days in the hospital, he was referred to as a “cop killer” by his escorting officer. The desk sergeant was asked to treat him as such. The police report has yet to be made public, and all witness accounts of the incident say that Tyrelle fled from the police unarmed!

Something is not right here. If there was any time to speak up, the time is now. Let’s ask the police some questions:

If there were five officers on hand, why is it that not one of them chased the driver?

If Tyrelle in fact did have a firearm and dropped it while fleeing, why would five officers run past it and leave it for anyone to find?

The SFPD always calls for witnesses to come forward to help solve crimes. Well, witnesses have spoken and they’re saying that you guys are full of shit, your case is bogus and Tyrelle is innocent. So what now?

Even if it is the case that Tyrelle is mixed up in this turf war madness – and it hasn’t been proven that he is – it still gives the SFPD no license to shoot to kill an unarmed man, to shoot him in the back.

Show me these “assaulted” officers who so feared being killed by this child that they decided to enlist the help of half the damn force to gun him down in broad daylight. Maybe if they’re so afraid for their lives, they should choose another profession. I hear there are some pig openings at Hormel. They’d be glad to have ‘em.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Tyrelle was one of the kids assaulted by SFPD in 2002. But I don’t think so. I believe that he was targeted by the cops and has been since Jan. 21, three years ago. Thank God he survived.

You would have to be completely oblivious not to notice a correlation between the two incidents. On Sept. 21, staff writers with the Chronicle wrote, “Police say the episode began when they got a 911 call from a tipster who gave the license plate of a car and said the two males in it had guns.”

On April 29, 2003, in a story detailing the improper conduct used in the MLK Day incident, Jaxon Van Derbeken reported, “police were summoned by word that two African American men were seen taking guns out of a burgundy-colored car near the Boys and Girls Club.”

Sounds like the same story to me.

Since the death of Officer Isaac Espinoza – who some residents claim was a dirty cop – the Bayview police squad has shown their true colors. “Accidental” deaths of Black men while in custody, mysterious disappearances of Hunters Point youth and a rise in unsolved murders during the wee hours of the morning – when most people know that HP is a ghost town – lead me to believe that there may be more to the folks in our justice department than meets the eye.

Maybe the unsolved mysteries are gang related – we’re just looking for the wrong gang.

A lot of us are suffering from voluntary ignorance. Somehow, there are those of us who still believe that the police will save us and that they will take all the bad people away and leave us poor Negroes be. I’ve got a news flash for you, Hunters Point: To them, we are the bad people.

We’ve allowed the construction of a ball park, businesses and even a light rail system to take place without us – and without receiving one dime. We’ve allowed so-called District 10 representatives like the ever-missing-in-action Sophie Maxwell into our community and have gotten nothing but grief in return. We’ve even allowed multi-million dollar projects like the renovation of the Hunters Point Shipyard to go on right under our noses, without getting so much as a nod or a “howdy do.”

Meanwhile, we’re down at YCD doing pushups in the rain and can’t even get a job at McDonald’s. Why are we letting these people in?

The Hunters Point plantation

We think we know about the Civil Rights Movement; some of us even joined the Million Man March. We think we’ve got it all covered. But what we do not know – or will not admit to – is that within our flock there is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, one who could help to turn this nightmare into the dream our community is meant to be. His name is Gavin Newsom.

In the days of slavery, when the master wanted to cool down rising tensions or suspected the slaves might rise up, he would throw a social, a get-together that gave his nigger slaves and the nigger slaves from neighboring plantations a chance to party and pretend they weren’t slaves for a day.

The women would put on their best, the kids would play games like stick ball and the men would laugh it up until sundown.

They had a meal of assorted pork and chicken parts, roasted on the fire, and that night they’d all go to sleep, bellies full and believing that things might just be all right, as long as they were good niggers – but knowing damn well that come sun-up, they’d be back picking cotton.

Every time our community makes a peep about racial, political and civil injustices or unfair educational standards for our children, Gavin Newsom is right there with his SFPD buddies and a basketball – readying us for a good ol’ fashioned barbecue.

All the while he’s thinking, “I mean, c’mon, what nigger doesn’t like chicken and basketball, right? A quick game of 3-on-3 is sure to calm those darkies down.”

He even calls up KMEL to play that “Trick-a-Nigga” soundtrack, and we fall for it every time. If you think this guy is gonna lead us into “promised land,” I got news for you, Black folks: Gavin Newsom ain’t Harriet Tubman.

Newsom may show up at a press conference – with a bucket full of crocodile tears – crying on cue and declaring war on crime, but he is nowhere to be found when the police shoot us down in the streets. I guess he’s too busy funding programs like YCD’s “boot camp” – half assed “employment training” that teach you to be completely submissive to authority and that doing pushups at 5:00 in the morning guarantees you a job – that help to perpetuate the niggerisms that tear this community apart. Programs that turn young brothers back to the street because they seldom give the results they promise.

Newsom is bringing the police to our doorsteps and telling us that they are the solution, to trust him. And loving people that we are, we’ve been applauding him for hiring Lennar to build housing on a site so toxically contaminated that the average lifespan of the residents in the surrounding area is less than 50 years. Way to go, Gavin!

While we’re being murdered and incarcerated, beaten and discriminated against by his overseers – the SFPD – Massa Gavin’s hands remain clean. The only thing Black he ever has to touch is the pen he uses to sign our homes, our community and our lives away to white folks just like him.

Putting our fists in the system

Our community does not need to be “policed” by people who would rather kill us than keep us. Our community does not need help to raise our children, to build our families, to worship our Gods. How can we expect them to help build up the Bayview when their job is to tear it down?

We’ve been here for generations, and after rioting and protesting and marching, we have yet to be rewarded for our suffering. Not once have we been given the respect we are due. It’s time to stop singing and shout, people!

Yes, they are “renovating” our neighborhood, but these palm trees and train tracks are not for us. These new walkways were not constructed to hold our footsteps – but I can promise you that they will!

Many will lie down and let their spirits die, knowing that a grave is being built for them in the Shipyard. While our brothers continue to murder each other – believing that they are so unworthy of living that taking another man’s life couldn’t possibly soil their character – a grave has been built at 850 Bryant.

While we are deprived of adequate housing, healthcare and employment, a grave is being dug for us. Just as Nagin, Bush and NOPD dug our grave in New Orleans, Newsom and the SFPD are digging our grave in San Francisco.

Don’t let them bury you, Black people. Just as our numbers are dwindling, they can also rise. Be strong enough to say “enough.” As they sprinkle deception and lies over your heads, wake up and raise your Black fists.

Take hold of what was yours all along. Bayview Hunters Point belongs to us. We have a right to fight for our community and our families. Put up your dukes.

Demand justice for Cammerin Boyd, demand justice for Idriss Stelley, demand justice for Tyrelle Taylor, for the missing and “accidentally” murdered, for the children without fathers, for the mothers without sons. Demand justice for Bayview Hunters Point, and if they won’t give it to you, take it!

Email Ebony at ebonywrites [at] sfbayview.com.


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