Antonio Martin, 18, is the third Ferguson-area young black man to be shot and killed by white cops since the shooting death of Michael Brown
Berkeley is a small town in the greater St. Louis area. It is only three miles from Ferguson. Like Ferguson, Berkeley’s population is mostly black. On Tuesday a white Berkeley cop shot and killed a young black man. Berkeley Mayor Theodore Hoskins said that while Ferguson was a predominantly black town with a white mayor and white police chief, “Berkeley has a black mayor, a black city manager and a black police chief. We’re different than Ferguson.”
Different than Ferguson? Well, not exactly. Just as in Ferguson, rioting broke out in Berkeley after the shooting of 18-year-old Antonio Martin. An unruly crowd of 300 blacks threw rocks, bricks, bottles and lit fireworks at police officers and tried to break into stores for some pre-Christmas looting. Four rioters were arrested for assaulting police officers.
Around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday, an unidentified 34-year-old, six-year veteran cop arrived at a Berkeley gas station in response to the report of a theft. What happened next was caught by the Mobil station’s surveillance camera. When he got out of his cop car he confronted two men, one being Martin. After speaking with them for about 90 seconds, Martin walked away, then turned around and pointed a gun at the cop. Fearing for his life, the officer stumbled back and fired three rounds, one of which struck Martin, killing the black youth.
A Hi-Point 9 mm pistol was found beside Martin’s body. It’s serial number had been filed off and it had five rounds in its magazine and one round in the chamber.
The officer’s attorney believes the theft report was an attempt to lure a cop into a deadly ambush.
Martin’s mother claims that Antonio had just left their house to meet his girlfriend. She told reporters that the cop did not need to shoot her son because he did not have a gun. She painted Antonio as a fine son who was trying to get into the Job Corps after just graduating from high school. "He's like any other kid who had dreams or hopes," she said. "We loved being around him. He'd push a smile out of you."
Momma’s darling angel has an arrest record that includes three assault charges, plus charges of armed robbery, armed criminal action and unlawful use of a weapon. If Antonio is "like any other kid who had dreams or hopes," God help us all!
The media is questioning why the cop was not wearing the body camera that had been issued to him, thus raising the suspicion that he wanted to hide something. Taurean Russell, co-founder of Hands Up United, doesn’t think there was any need to question Martin in the first place. And a number of protesters condemned the officer for not using pepper spray or a stun gun.
Martin’s death was the third fatal shooting of young black men by white cops in the St. Louis area since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown on August 9. On August 18, Kajieme Powell, 25, was shot and killed by St. Louis cops when he charged at them with a knife. On October 9, a St. Louis cop shot and killed Vonderrit Myers, 18, when the black youth fired a gun at him.
David Michael Smith aka Red David, a professed Marxist who was fired by College of the Mainland last year, asks: When will the cops stop killing us? The answer to that inflammatory question is easy: When people stop trying to kill cops, or by their actions, stop putting cops in fear of their lives.
The anti-police protest movement’s rallying cry is ‘Black Lives Matter.’ I say cop lives matter too!
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