The DC Metro CPUSA and DC YCL issued the following statement.

Police violence and white supremacist terrorism against Black Americans continues to expose the fallacy of U.S. democracy and human rights, especially in a predominately Black city which happens to be the nation’s capital — Washington, D.C., known derisively as “Chocolate City.”

In the early morning of August 25, 2021, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) murdered 27-year-old An’Twan Gilmore, a Black man, as he was awakened from sleeping in his car on New York Avenue NE.

As details continue to come out, what we know is that Gilmore was sleeping inside his car when a swarm of at least eight MPD officers surrounded him, guns drawn. When Gilmore was awakened and startled by the sudden presence of police, he was executed. As our friends at Black Lives Matter DC said, sleeping in a car can never justify a state execution in D.C. or anywhere else. This was the second D.C. police shooting in less than 12 hours.

On August 26, MPD released body camera footage from the officers who killed the 27-year-old. Unfortunately, the police chief said, “the officer’s body camera was activated but that part of the shooting is obstructed by the protective shield the officer was holding.” Cell phone footage from a bystander shows close to 10 MPD officers surrounding Gilmore’s car with weapons drawn, then shooting him 10 times immediately as he woke up. We demand accountability.

A few days before, on August 19, MPD de-escalated a white supremacist bomb threat in downtown D.C. There was an hours-long standoff, where a white supremacist had bomb-making materials in his truck and threatened to blow up Congress. The difference in police tactics shows that policing in the United States is a tool of social control of Black, brown, and other oppressed peoples, and an institution designed to protect white supremacy and private property.

The DC Metro District of the Communist Party USA and the DC Young Communist League expresses our full and complete solidarity with the family of An’Twan Gilmore and all the countless families across the D.C. metropolitan area who have lost loved ones to racial terror and police violence. As members of the D.C. Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, we call on all progressive and democratic forces in Washington, D.C., to continue mass protest against police violence and the increase of police budgets in D.C. by the current city council. We need to continue struggling for police oversight and accountability. This can only come about through changes like an all-elected civilian control board that has full power and final authority over police policy and budgets, full authority on disciplinary measures and legal recourse, hiring and firing power over the police chief or superintendent and all officers on the force, negotiation on police union contracts, etc. We need community control over the police now!

Image: Afro.com.

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