Family & Friends of Tyrone West demonstrate their feelings about Fox 45 News.
Was Tyrone West initially pulled over for a “traffic stop” or a “drug stop?” What was the actual cause of his death? Why couldn’t ten officers arrest him safely? If they really found cocaine on his person, why didn’t they follow normal procedures for drug confiscation? Why such a big delay in taking him to the hospital? TV news networks and the Baltimore Sun have refused to ask these difficult questions, choosing instead to report what the authorities tell them.
The Family of Tyrone West will be at Kitmore & Kelway on the one year anniversary of the murder. Will TV news be there? Will you?
We cannot trust mainstream news or police to give us good information about what’s happening in our city. Thus we are taking media into our own hands.
I was sitting in my living room The evening of July 18th when I heard police sirens . I looked out my window and saw three vehicles racing down the street and I knew something bad was happening. I called upstairs to my wife and then opened my door, looking down the street to my left (I live in the 1300 Kitmore) Allt he way down at Kelway I saw what appeared to be about ten police officers circling in a frenzy. My wife and I thought someone had committed a robbery or that there was a shooting. Before long I see them place a large handcuffed man on his face. Then something happened and my wife became upset because they turned the man on his back and started cpr. We had no idea what happened until the next day. Here is what bothered us the most…to this day. We kept asking each other why did it take so long for the ambulance and here’s the incredible part that infuriated us….The ambulance sat there for what seemed forever. “Why aren’t they taking him to Good Sam” my wife asked as the minutes ticked and ticked by. Good Sam is 5 or 6 blocks away and common sense tells you that in a cpr situation you continue cpr and get the patient to the professionals asap!!!! They didn’t! My computer has a grainy photo of the crime scene…and it was a crime to leave him there that long!
Read this information, share it around, and, most importantly, think critically about what you read and see!
“Below the Fold” — more people are speaking up about inconsistency and bias in local media coverage.
Family members of Tyrone West & Maurice Donald Johnson reflect on the struggle for justice after the “Public Safety Summit” at Morgan State.
Tawanda Jones reports that her family is being harassed by police. They were also approached by a bishop who offered them hush money. She says:
“If anything happens to the West family or friends, please blame the City of Baltimore.”
Marcella Holloman’s son, Maurice Donald Johnson, was killed in front of her, in her house, by police. She reminds us:
“And they think that people don’t get killed in they house, in the United States. Yes, they do. [Yes they do.] They think all this killing happen in Iran and Iraq. They just run up and kill your family member in your house. No, it happen in Baltimore City too, in United States of America. People get killed in front of they family for no reason. It happen here too.”
Abdul-Salaam to Blake & Batts: You say you are trying to help the city, but you are hurting the very people we need in the community. You are terrorizing the children with a police force that can attack citizens with impunity.
Coverage of this event in The Sun is inadequate and misleading. Audience comments overwhelmingly criticized Mayor Blake & Police Chief Batts for enabling violence against ordinary people in Baltimore. Yet this article, by Colin Campbell, devotes only one paragraph — the tenth out of sixteen — to this type of criticism. Most of the article pays fawning tribute to the city’s untested new plan to curb violence, despite the bad record of the officials who are promoting it. (Mr. Campbell’s Twitter coverage was similar. Justin Fenton’s tweetstream was a little better. Remember, Tweets at the top are most recent.)
The article’s title, “Mayor, Batts attend west-side town hall meeting”, also distorts the reality of what happened. Ms. Blake and Mr. Batts did not “attend” a community meeting; they set up their own event, on their own terms, with their own overt & covert security forces. As the city is well aware, these meetings were scheduled for the same time as West Wednesday. Although the official purpose of the event was to reach out to the community, in practice the city officials were quite hostile to the people who came to see them. They also made it difficult for citizen journalists to record the event.
Nevertheless, Baltimore Bloc brings us several videos that show more of what really happened at this “town hall:”:
The Baltimore Eclipse 