TW:domestic abuse, TW:Police: 10 OPD officers watch a WOC bleed out, do nothing to help her.
I watched 10 Oakland Police officers watch a woman of color and mother of two bleed out this morning. I watched them watch her die.
She was my neighbor. Her name was Marida. About two months ago, her ex beat the shit out of her and she escaped to her front porch and was crying. When I heard her screaming, I got out of bed, pulled my big boots on, and grabbed a baseball bat. I chased her ex off with the bat and then took care of her and stayed with her while the cops questioned her. I met her kids. I knew her.
She moved out of the house and the abusive ex stayed. I hadn’t seen her for over a month.
At around 5 am, my husband and I woke up to screaming and yelling. We both thought we heard two men fighting and threatening to kill each other. I personally will put myself in a lot of danger to help a battered woman but I really don’t want to get involved in a fight with two dudes who are probably stronger than me and threatening to shoot each other. I stayed in my bed.
Then there was screaming. A lot of it. Then there was silence. Then there was a man screaming. He was yelling, “Oh my god, why did you do that? You’re bleeding!” and so I assumed someone had been stabbed. Then the cops came.
I’ve been doing Copwatch for a couple of years now. I unfortunately had every single one of my cameras stolen in a home robbery in December, so I couldn’t tape anything. But I could watch. So this is what I saw from my front porch.
I saw Marida laying on the ground by her house. I saw at least 10 police officers walking around the house, one taking pictures, all of them shining their flashlights around. Some were talking to the upset ex. I heard him tell them that she tried to climb through the back window and cut her arm on the glass. Obviously I don’t know if I believe that cuz, you know, he BEAT HER two months ago, but that’s kind of irrelevant.
I thought she was dead already. I thought this because no one was in any hurry. They were taking pictures of the front of the house while she was on the ground. Not once did I see anyone crouch down to check on her, to talk to her. They stood above her and shined their flashlights over her body. That image will stay with me for the rest of my god damn life.
It took 15-20 minutes for an ambulance to come. I should have timed it, that was a rookie mistake, but like I said, I thought she was dead already. The fucking idiot cops had parked their cars in the middle of the street so the ambulance had to park half a block away and I watched them LEISURELY stroll up to the house with a stretcher and then LEISURELY stroll back to the ambulance. I basically only really knew she was alive when I saw that 1. she wasn’t in a body bag and 2. she was moving on the stretcher.
I live across the street from a children’s hospital. I mean, literally across the street. I mean I live 25 yards away from a children’s hospital.
I watched the cops watch a woman die this morning. A black woman. A mother of two. A domestic abuse survivor. I watched them watch her die.
A neighbor told my husband this morning while he was walking the dog that she didn’t make it. The neighbor, also a single mother of two and a woman of color, said to him, “I guess it’s not like the movies where everyone rushes around and they save you right there on the ground.” My husband nodded but didn’t say what we all know to be true:
“They do if you’re white.”
Unarmed Father of 4 Pleaded for His Life as Police Beat Him to Death
raniakhalek.comJesus Christ. These cops are straight-up murderers. The police department says they are “investigating” the man’s death, but can anyone honestly expect these cops to be brought to justice by the very institution which trained, employed, armed, and has already mounted a defense of them?
This is why police brutality and murder must be protested and combated at every turn, lest their unaccountable violence continue indefinitely.
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David Sal Silva, a 33-year-old father of four small children between the ages of 2 and 10, was beaten to death by as many as nine police officers in Bakersville, California, early Wednesday morning. Police say Silva was intoxicated and fighting officers. But this was contradicted by several eyewitnesses.
Grainy security camera footage obtained by 23ABC from a person who was “afraid of a cover-up by deputies and wanted ‘the truth to come out’”, appears to corroborate witness accounts, showing several men striking a man laying on the ground with objects over a dozen times.
The release of a 911 call from a woman who witnessed the beating (listen here) doesn’t bode well for the officers either. The woman can be heard telling the dispatcher:
“There’s a man laying on the floor and your police officers beat the shit out of him and killed him. I have it all on video camera.I am sitting here on the corner of Flower and Palm right now and you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Sheriffs. The guy was laying on the floor and eight Sheriff’s ran up and started beating him up with sticks. The man is dead laying right here, right now.”
Despite the hazy security footage and 911 call, police are sticking to their story. So, someone is lying. But who? Fortunately, at least two witnesses captured the beating on their cell phones. However, the devices were immediately seized by police, which is illegal in California.
Cops vs. Witnesses
Kern County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ray Pruitt says that a deputy with a canine was responding to a call from Kern Medical Facility late Tuesday night about an intoxicated man outside when he spotted and approached Silva at a nearby intersection. Pruitt claims that Silva put up a fight when the deputy attempted to take him into custody, at which point more deputies and two California Highway Patrol officers showed up to help. Silva then had trouble breathing. He was taken to Kern Medical Center and died less than an hour later.
But Witnesses tell a very different story.
Just minutes before Silva’s encounter with police, a woman, who asked not to be identified, told ABC23 that she saw Silva lying on the sidewalk seemingly unconscious. ”I seen the guy laying there. I thought something was wrong with him. Then when I saw him moving… I saw his chest moving up and down…I knew that he was just drunk and eventually he’ll wake up,” the woman said.
It’s hard to imagine that Silva was able to muster the strength to fight off several police officers just minutes after he was purportedly incapacitated.
Ruben Ceballos, 19, told The Bakersfield Californian he was at his home and in bed when he awoke around midnight to screams and loud bangs, which he soon recognized as the sound of police batons smashing into Silva’s skull. ”When I got outside I saw two officers beating a man with batons and they were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head,” Ceballos said. The beating continued for several minutes despite the desperate cries for help. Then Silva went silent and became unresponsive, Ceballos said.
“His body was just lying on the street and before the ambulance arrived one of the officers performed CPR on him and another one used a flashlight on his eyes but I’m sure he was already dead.”
The Sheriff’s office told the Californian that they will not comment on the case until their investigation into the matter is complete.
