| OPD shoots unarmed 15-year-old in the back in East Oakland |
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| by Minister of Information JR | |
| Wednesday, 11 July 2007 | |
 Unarmed Lorante Studesville, 15, was shot in the back by holice on If you’re a young Black male living in Oakland, the chances are that you have been terrorized by the police on one or more occasions. There’s definitely nothing new about police beating, shooting or killing Black people, but we’re talking about it because this is a case that the people who believe that the system will help us could learn from. This is a clear example of how the police are nothing but a lawless occupying army in our community, in the same way that the U.S. army is in Iraq. We, as Black people have to critically understand that the police are enemies of our community. Look at the circumstances around the case. Why wasn’t anyone fired and indicted? The officer who shot Lorante was reportedly put on paid leave (or paid vacation) after the shooting. If somebody shot that cop, they would be indicted for murder while the investigation was in the process. If we didn’t have one already, this is a reason why the Black community has to begin to organize to defend itself against America’s biggest gang: the police. If we don’t, who else cares about the safety of us, our children and our community – like us? MOI JR: Cinnamon, can you give us a recap of what happened on July 3? Cinnamon: On July 3, the (police) officers claim that they saw my son place something into his mouth, which appeared to them to be narcotics. He then drank from the beverage that he was holding and that “gave them the reason to initiate contact” between my son and themselves. They got out of the vehicle and, probably intimidated by the police because of a previous experience he had regarding police brutality, he probably ran out of fear. And when he ran, the officers were in pursuit. One actually chased him on foot, and as he ran through yards, the other officer drove around the corner to catch him on the opposite side. The officer that was chasing him on foot radioed in, and he claimed he saw my son dispose of a weapon. Even though that message went clearly through the police radio, the officer that was waiting on the opposite side, on 107th Avenue, for my son to come through the yards proceeded to warn my son to stop and give up. My son continued to run from the officer that was behind him, continuously running towards the officer that was in front of him and, according to the article, when he reached approximately 40 feet from the officer on 107th Avenue, my son was shot in the neck by the police officer. Rev. Sanders: One newspaper I read said that he (the police) took a head shot once he saw the child running down the street, looking like he was reaching for his belt. But I know that these kids be sagging out here. Most Black youth be sagging. You know the difference between someone reaching for a pistol and somebody running down the street trying to pull their pants up. I’m kind of thinkin’ that’s what went down, because I see how my son dresses, and he ain’t never got no hip-huggers on. MOI JR: Well, Rev. Sanders let me ask you: Being a Black man right here in the Bay Area, can you give us a little bit of the history and how they act in the Black community? Rev. Sanders: I got a history with police and within the community understanding the way it is because my father and my uncle were Black Panthers. Richard O’Neal (uncle), who’s in jail right now, was just indicted with those eight men for allegedly killing an officer and conspiracy (the San Francisco 8 case). My family roots deal with the Civil Rights Movement. I know that there have been clashes in the Bay with the police officers. My uncle, Richard O’Neal, was shot 7 times in the back on McAllister Street by police officers in 1977. My father was also in protest with him. So I grew up very aware that there were oftentimes problems with the police officers in Frisco and in Oakland. That fueled my own behavior, because I just did a 10-year sentence in prison, and I did 6 out of the 10. And when I came back to the streets, I definitely wanted to reach out to my son, to try to snatch him out of that. His mom really pushed very hard in the last couple of weeks to really get us close together. We had to overcome a lot of hurdles because I know the dangers lurking, not only by the police department but the traps and vices in the ghetto community itself.  Lorante Studesville Rev. Sanders: I just left the hospital about 30 minutes ago, and he’s very uncomfortable. He can’t talk, His chest is open. They just closed his sternum yesterday. They left it open because they wanted to try to take the bullet out of the spine, if the bleeding would have stopped. I think that the neurologist said that they think it should just stay where it is. They don’t think that it is going to move into the spinal column. He’s got tubes coming out of his mouth, man. His head is swollen. To me he looks like Emmett Till when they pulled him out of the ocean. The swollen-ness of his head went down, but from his head to his feet, he’s filled with fluid. The left side of his body is weak. His right hand he thinks he can move it, but when I tell him to move his fingers, he can barely move the finger. His right side is working swell, but his left side looks like some nerve damage for sure. MOI JR: Where exactly was he hit? Rev. Sanders: Lorante motioned the best that he could that he was hit from the back, when I asked him. When I look into his face, I see a big gash on his chin, and it is stapled together. There is a long cut along his neck. The doctors themselves don’t seem to be too sure whether it was from the front or back, but it appears that it is from the back. If it’s from the back, then there is no way that they could say he pointed something at them or that he was reaching for anything because if a child is running away from you, he’s definitely not trying to shoot at you. The officers did say that his hands were raised in their direction, and the article said that it appeared that he was reaching for his belt, so that could’ve just been his arms chucking away slapping at the wind. Cinnamon: That could’ve been him running and in the process of surrendering and raising his hands from when he was running to where he could show them his hands to allow them a chance to put him into custody. Rev. Sanders: It appears that he was definitely shot in the back. Cinnamon: And on top of that, my son has numerous marks all over his face as if not only was he shot, as if it was some type of tackle or some type of extracurricular activities that took place following the shooting. Rev. Sanders: Yeah definitely. He got scratches over his eye, the side of his head, his hands. And I don’t mean the IV spots either. She pointed it out to me when we were in the hospital. Cinnamon: Concrete scab marks. Rev. Sanders: Like they were smashing his head into the ground or something. MOI JR: As two parents who have been victims of police terrorism in Oakland, but who also have a son who was recently shot in the face, what do y’all think about – you know how people say, “I can’t believe that the police did this. I think that your son is bad” – you know a lot of specifically white people who don’t live in the hood don’t know how police act toward Black people. It is not no “Leave it to Beaver” type of situation like how they may deal with the police in their communities. How do y’all feel as parents raising a child right here in the hood? Cinnamon: Well, I feel as if my son needs to be completely removed from the Bay Area, and it is sad to say that the police want us, as parents, to teach our children to believe that the police are there to protect you but in actuality if you read the articles presented to you that presented my son as a suspected drug dealer and a gun toter and all of the other reasons that they gave to justify the shooting, then you’ll be able to see that it looks like the police’s job is to protect themselves first and foremost. Rev. Sanders: And the police force, the unfortunate part about them is no one polices them. They keep it, just like we keep it in the streets, they ain’t telling on each other. They got a blue shield. They protect their own. Once they do something wrong, you have to go through some many extremes. If you don’t have high powered money to get an attorney, if you don’t got some Paris Hilton-like celebrity, ain’t nobody trippin’ on this, man. It ain’t like the Channel 2 news is trippin’. I had to call them. I called the newspaper the other day saying that I don’t like that you said that my son was a dope dealer and they had no crack on him. There’s no crack in evidence but yet they said. ‘We suspect him.’ The doctors didn’t find no dope in his stomach.  Rev. Sanders and Cinnamon, parents of Lorante Studesville, told their story Monday on the Block Report Radio segment of Flashpoints, KPFA’s flagship investigative news show. Cinnamon: No, they actually released the police custody hold on him. Rev. Sanders: They sure did. They released it within a day or two. MOI JR: So basically the police shot this youngsta, said that he was a drug dealer, and they say that he was going to shoot at them, but they released the police custody hold? Cinnamon: Yes they did. Rev. Sanders: And it ain’t no dope in his stomach. So far, there is no problems with his intestinal track. MOI JR: Basically, I’m saying that they disproved themselves by releasing the hold, right? Rev. Sanders: That’s a felony affidavit that they got on him still, in which once he wakes up, the felony affidavit – in which I had one on me before in my life – that’s where they could press it if they want to or they don’t have too, and it gives them that three-day waiver. The three days in which they have to charge you on a regular case, it doesn’t matter when you have a felony affidavit. That’s an ongoing investigation, and they can arrest you later on. So if they decide to trump up something or if they say we had dope, it just didn’t get in the police report or the newspaper but we already have a sack. You never know how they could twist it. MOI JR: Basically, they say that he was swallowing dope, and none was found in his system. Cinnamon: Exactly. The officers said that they observed him and his friend crossing the intersection. He apparently walked directly in front of the police car. So the officers are saying that he walked in front of them, then put dope in his mouth and swallowed it, without them even approaching him or even giving him a reason to believe that he was about to be chased. Rev. Sanders: So he probably panicked like everybody has done. I used to do the same thing. We’re taught to do that. We know when white men jump out on you – and it might sound racist – for those who know me, I’m a reverend – they might think he must be trippin’. I’m not trippin’. When you are a young Black youth, police sweat you, beijing (holice) be at you, especially those Narcos. You don’t want them just slamming you on the ground, mistreating you, asking you your name, and you haven’t done nothing and they treat you like you just robbed a bank and then they just let you go. Kids run from that, and that’s what I know. Every kid does that, every youth in the ghetto. We bounce on the police. We ain’t trying to talk to them. MOI JR: What is it that we could do to help y’all? Are you guys in need of lawyers? What are y’all in need of that people reading this could help you with? Rev. Sanders: First of all I want to say that I have been looking for a way to start a Lorante benefit fund. I went to the bank, man; the bank told me that I couldn’t start a fund because it needed to be a living entity, and I would have to be the sole proprietor. They told me that I had to go to the Red Cross or find a church. I called the church and they said that they never done that before; the bank is supposed to do it. I called the Red Cross, but they had certain hours and they wasn’t open. So what we want to do is start a fund for his healing and for his mama, who wants to get out of the ghetto where she is living at. So we want to do something for his health, you know, because he is going to have some serious issues with his healing. He is going to need some rehabilitation. And so I don’t know where the expenses are going to come in at. We’re both some low income individuals. I just got out of prison myself, and I just got into ministry, and she’s been struggling all these years on her own. So we’ve been having trouble getting some entity to take donations for us, you know; that’s the first thing. Cinamon: What I want is for everyone to realize that regardless of the allegations that were made in this situation that happened, my son is 15 years old. He’s a child. I don’t understand how police officer Alan Leal could justify shooting a child. He doesn’t look as if he could be an adult. There is no way, if he walked past your vehicle and you looked him in his face and saw him with another teenager that you would be under the impression that he was adult. I don’t understand why children are not dealt with differently than the adults in the criminal justice system in California. Rev. Sanders: I just want to say one more thing too. They said in the newspaper that even though the officer found a gun in the back yard and had possession of it and radioed that in, they kind of justified shooting him anyway, because they said that they had a murder suspect two weeks ago that dumped one gun, but when they cornered him, he had one more. And they said, “So it is not unusual for felons or suspected criminals to have two guns. They used this one fella who had two pistols to say, ‘Well, this is going to be our standard practice now so we might as well bust you in the dome because this last cat had two guns.’” MOI JR: Basically, that justifies them killing any Black male who they accuse of throwing a gun and being unarmed. Rev. Sanders: They set it up as a precedence and the newspapers or whoever they told it to printed it up as law almost. MOI JR: Do you guys have a phone number or email so that people could get in touch with you? Rev. Sanders: Well, I got a ministry number – if somebody especially wants to help us with this funding for my child and his rehabilitation – at (650) 388-8352. That’s Law Faith Ministries. You could email me at myspace.com/blackbook840. Cinnamon: And my information is (510) 302-8673 for anybody that has any type of advice, any type of support, any type of help that they are able to offer me to be able to relocate and get my son out of West Oakland. And get him somewhere where he could feel safe and he doesn’t have to feel threatened by the police, because honestly based on what he is going through right now, I can’t convince him that the police are there to protect him or that he should have faith in the police department. So it’s going to be a healing process for him to even trust the police in general, as a child. And it is sad to say that his whole adulthood could be ruined because he was shot as a child by the police. Rev. Sanders: We’re calling out to Christians, Muslims, foundations. There are people who know how to do certain things in this situation that we are just learning right now in 72 to 114 hours. We’re trying to do it all within a weekend, within just a couple of days, and we’re having some difficulties. So we’re really hoping that people out there hear about us and reach out to us. And if they got contacts in other media venues, that they can get this out there. Email POCC Minister of Information JR at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , and listen to the Block Report at hiphopwarreport.com or myspace.com/blockreportfilm. |
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