DE LACY DAVIS
The founder and president of Black Cops Against Police Brutality and a 15-year veteran of the East Orange, N.J., police department, De Lacy Davis is a recently retired sergeant in the community services unit. He said today: “The New York and LA police departments unfortunately set the pattern for the country. What we see with the killing of Sean Bell is similar to the [1999] Amadou Diallo killing — a hail of bullets. And to say that one of the police involved is black misses the point: It’s about training policies that are cavalier with the lives of people of color and poor people.”
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VAN JONES
Jones is national executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Center’s projects include Bay Area PoliceWatch. Jones said today: “Since the Diallo killing there’s really been no discernible changes in oversight and practices, in spite of massive protests. Police don’t know that if you kill someone like this you could end up not just out of a job, but in jail.”
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MICAH SCHAFFER
Schaffer is director of the just-released movie “Death of Two Sons.” He said today of the film: “It’s about how we value black life less. It’s about the Diallo killing and the death of Jesse Thyne, a Peace Corps volunteer who was then living with the Diallo family in Guinea and attended Diallo’s funeral. Within a year he was brutally killed in a car accident in Guinea. The taxi driver responsible for his death spent three years in prison; Diallo’s killers walked free.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167