Shem Walker remembered
by Daniel Bush
Sep 29, 2009 | 1029 views | 0 0 comments | 19 19 recommendations | email to a friend | print
Police have not revealed the name of the undercover cop who shot and killed Shem Walker on his stoop in Clinton Hill, more than two months after the shooting.

Family members, friends, and elected officials unhappy over the NYPD’s handling of the case gathered September 23 to remember Walker, an Army veteran and father, and call on the city to bring Walker’s shooter to justice.

They also urged an end to racial profiling in a city that has seen several African-American men killed by police in the past year alone.

Walker was killed July 11 by an undercover cop seated on the stoop of his family home at 370 Lafayette Avenue.

Police say Walker attacked the undercover officer, who was involved in a drug-bust operation, and was killed in the ensuing struggle. Family and friends of Walker dispute the police record.

At the recent protest meeting, they called on police to show better judgment in neighborhoods like Clinton Hill, which are predominantly black.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him,” Shavone Walker, the victim’s eldest daughter, said of her father. She said at the time of his death Walker, a convicted drug dealer, was carrying nothing more dangerous in his pockets than a pair of tweezers.

“An innocent man was killed on the property of his own home,” she added. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries spoke of several police policy and judicial system reforms that would reduce the likelihood of future police shootings, and bring responsible cops to full justice.

Jeffries called for an independent special prosecutor to investigate cases like the Walker shooting, instead of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, which is currently investigating the case.

Jeffries said because of the institutional relationship between the Brooklyn DA’s office and the NYPD, the DA’s office rarely indicts police officers charged in the deaths of civilians.

He also suggested blocking change of venue motions, which allow for cases to be tried outside of the borough where the crimes are committed; and an end to a New York Constitutional right that allows defendants to unilaterally forego a jury trial for a judge trial.

“Judges are reluctant to convict police officers,” Jeffries said, because state judges share the same institutional ties with the police department as the District Attorney’s office.

“We have no confidence whatsoever in the District Attorney’s office” to successfully prosecute the Walker case, said Noel Leader, a co-founder of the organization 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

Leader blamed Walker’s death on high levels of racism within the NYPD. To avoid future shootings, Leader said, an example has to be made of the undercover cop who shot Walker.

“He has to be arrested, he has to be prosecuted, and he has to do lengthy jail time,” said Leader.

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