This is the 20-foot SFPD mobile command post that was parked prominently on Third Street in front of the Bayview Opera House on Saturday. It was on that block during the 1966 uprising that police lined up execution style and shot into the Opera House where children had taken sanctuary. Tuesday the mobile command post was found in the Hunters Point Shipyard outside the big police warehouse that houses the bomb squad and other special operations that plague Bayview Hunters Point. The warehouse, incidentally, is only 20 feet from Parcel E, home to the 46-acre landfill that’s one of the most toxic in the nation in the area where Mayor Newsom wants to build a 49ers’ stadium. BVHP can count on seeing the mobile command post around election time, when the police impound people’s cars and commit other acts of intimidation that tend to discourage people from voting. In the upcoming Feb. 5 presidential primary, Mayor Newsom is supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton, while support for Sen. Barack Obama seems overwhelming in Bayview Hunters Point. Photo: Willie Ratcliff

With a massive mobile SFPD command post stationed on Third Street, Bayview Hunters Point's main thoroughfare, on Saturday, the entire drug and gang task forces reassigned to work the neighborhood on the evening shift in uniform and a new precinct commander in charge of the Bayview Police Station, Mayor Newsom has made the neighborhood a police state and is setting the scene for more such atrocities.

When we saw the same kind of police occupation imposed on Blacks in New Orleans after Katrina, we called it "gentrification by genocide."

Worse yet, the cops are scared. Police Officers Association head Gary Delagnes, by most measures the most influential cop in San Francisco, where the Black incarceration rate is by far the highest among California's big cities and one of the highest in the world, said, "the idea promoted by commanders is to have specialized units ‘drive around the Bayview, jack everybody up and go after these thugs.'
"But, he said, ‘cops are going, "Oh, yeah, sure, and who is going to cover us? Who's going to defend us?" This city does not have the stomach to do this kind of stuff. They try to put the cops in the middle and the cops come out the losers,'" the Chronicle reported.

Gentrification by genocide is a scary job. Yet when police, with all their militarized weaponry, see Bayview Hunters Point, with the city's highest rate of home ownership and most stable population, as the enemy, it's the residents - like young Tyrelle - who are most in danger. Only when the community stands up and wraps its arms around our youth, demanding an end to police occupation and a new day of equality of opportunity, can we save them from prison or an early grave and give them hope - let them aspire to be president of the United States.

Tyrelle's paternal grandmother, Patsy Taylor, told me that in court last week, as Tyrelle's attorney, nationally renowned Public Defender Jeff Adachi, discussed preliminary motions with the judge and the DA, the DA kept laughing, accusing the defense of making Tyrelle out to be a choir boy. "But he really IS a choir boy," protested Ms. Taylor.

He grew up in True Hope Church of God in Christ, often attending several days a week with his maternal grandmother, Deborah Hodges, an evangelist in the church, where he helped in the Sunday School and the preschool. He worked three jobs and gave his earnings to his mother. As a loving big brother and the man of the house from age 12, he played a major role in raising and supporting his little brother and sister, giving them his food when there wasn't enough.

"He doesn't deserve this. He's such a loving person," protests grandmother Patsy Taylor, who attends Tyrelle's trial along with several of his cousins. They hope that once the jury is selected in a week or so, the community will pack the courtroom to show the judge and jury that we love our youth and demand justice.

Tyrelle stands as a symbol - and victim - of gentrification by genocide not only for the SFPD pumping three bullets into his back and side that are too dangerous to remove and one through his hand, then beating and kicking his almost lifeless body, on Sept. 9, 2005, but also for the notorious police attack on five little children, ages 12 to 14, on Martin Luther King Day in 2002. He was one of those children.

On that Martin Luther King Day exactly six years ago, we in Bayview Hunters Point first learned that gentrification - "repeopling" our neighborhood - was the explicit purpose of aggressive police behavior. The cop in charge of the assault, clearly a case of deliberate terrorism in front of the whole neighborhood, told the parents when they asked why the police were attacking their kids: "As long as you people are here, we will act like this."

"My 17-year-old daughter was a classmate of one of the MLK ‘02 victims," wrote Tami Bryant in a letter published Sept. 21, 2005, in the Chronicle and the following week in the Bay View.

"I will never forget her coming in, at 13 years old, and saying her friend was sexually molested by the police.

"This was a traumatic incident for five innocent children, their friends and families. Any troubles they have encountered since are no doubt rooted in this traumatic act of brutality by the police. The city of San Francisco owes them restitution. ...

"Tyrelle is innocent until proven guilty, and he needs to be portrayed sympathetically as the victim twice of police officers out of control.

"The kid had four bullets in him, and the officers delayed, wasting critical time, in calling an ambulance and roughed him up as he lay bleeding. This is attempted murder!

"Again, I appreciate your [front page] article, but please remember, there is a large segment of the population that is infuriated with the SFPD over this and very concerned that Tyrelle is treated fairly, humanely and that his medical needs, both physical and emotional, are addressed and healed."

Sept. 9, 2005, the day the SFPD sharpshooters tried so hard to murder Tyrelle, came only 12 days after Katrina, when the world was outraged at what can truthfully be described as the attempted murder, by government neglect and assault, of tens of thousands in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

It was the year after Officer Isaac Espinoza was killed in Bayview Hunters Point, the first SFPD officer to be shot and killed in the line of duty in a decade. His April 10, 2004, murder had been followed in quick succession by the extraordinarily brutal murders by SFPD of Cammerin Boyd and Gus Rugley. The rumor still circulates that the police wanted to take down 10 young Black men in exchange for Espinoza. Was Tyrelle their next target?

In a Sept. 21, 2005, Bay View story, Tyrelle's great aunt, Rachel Pitcher, wrote: "Today I spoke to an eye-witness to Tyrelle's shooting and was told the police shot him, kicked him while he was on the ground screaming in pain, telling him to ‘shut the f--- up. I hope you die!'

"The ambulance was not called right away and in fact arrived 15-20 minutes after the shooting. Is that the average response time? Or only in ‘the hood'?
"When I arrived at the hospital with some other members of my family, we had to stand in line before we could get any information on my nephew. His mother, obviously scared and crying, was told by a nurse that he was shot twice in the arm and he was OK.

"However, the ambulance attendant who brought Tyrelle to the hospital, overheard the nurse and said, ‘That's not correct.' He was hit twice in the back, once in his side and once in his hand.

"He went on to tell us that Tyrelle is hurt badly and will need surgery and intensive care after that. What was that nurse trying to cover up? That the police didn't shoot my nephew several times? That the SFPD wasn't trying to kill a young Black male with no weapon and no obvious threat to them?

"When we asked to speak to the doctor who was treating Tyrelle to give us an update on his condition, the Sheriff's deputy - not hospital staff - rudely told us we had to ‘get back.' I'm currently on crutches and cannot move fast, and he put his hands up as if to ‘make' me move back. No compassion, no caring attitude, just ‘move back!'

"I've spoken to several witnesses, and they all agree on this one fact: The SFPD chased Tyrelle, never shouting stop, halt or freeze, never firing a warning shot, just chased him down to shoot him.

"That was their goal. Only by the grace of God was their ultimate goal not achieved. They wanted him dead!"

As Tyrelle has celebrated his last two birthdays in jail awaiting trial and using his time to devour all the books he can get his hands on, San Francisco has steadily increased the "repeopling" pressure on Black and Brown neighborhoods, slapping San Francisco's first gang injunction on Hunters Point and the next two on the Fillmore and the Mission to demonize and criminalize our youth. Just as steadily, the three neighborhoods have been organizing together, turning out dozens - sometimes hundreds - at hearings to denounce police occupation and oppression.

Ironically, Mayor Newsom's current move to double and triple the police force in Bayview Hunters Point was prompted by the Jan. 12 killing of Terrell Rogers during halftime outside the gym where his daughter, the star of the Sacred Heart girls' basketball team, No. 1 in the nation, was playing. Sacred Heart is in the Fillmore, but since that neighborhood, once known as Harlem of the West, has long been gentrified, police pressure, the mayor apparently figured, was needed instead to speed gentrification in Bayview Hunters Point.

Police pressure to gentrify the neighborhood will only intensify until we take a stand, says Bay View publisher Willie Ratcliff. He is looking for the community to pack the courtroom for Tyrelle Taylor as they have for the San Francisco 8 - their presence exerting a force that is bending that case toward justice.

"They're charging him for them shooting him in the back," declares Ratcliff. "Running from the police does not deserve the death penalty. Instead of them being on trial, they're putting him on trial."

During jury selection, the public is likely to be excluded for lack of space in the courtroom. As soon as the jury is seated, probably toward the end of next week, however, court will be in session from about 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Bay View readers are urged to attend and to spread the word. Call the Bay View at (415) 671-0789 for updates.

In a year when a Black man has a realistic shot at the White House and in the week commemorating the revolutionary courage and world-transforming vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, can we contemplate letting the "law enforcers" - who never enforce the laws that Dr. King fought and died for - lock up a young man for the best years of his life for assaulting them when, in truth, they assaulted him?

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