Anger Boils at Funeral for Black Man in Michigan

Date: 23 April 2022 - 22:50

News ID: ۱۰۱۹۳۰

MICHIGAN (Dispatches) --
Anger and calls for justice dominated the funeral in Michigan on Friday of a Black man shot by a policeman, with U.S. civil rights leader Al Sharpton demanding the officer be publicly identified.
Sharpton compared Michigan in 2022 to “Mississippi in 1952” as he issued a rallying cry for 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya, who was killed during a traffic stop in the city of Grand Rapids on April 4.
“This cannot end today... We got to fight for him,” he told the church packed with hundreds of mourners, including Lyoya’s family and the families of other Black victims of police violence.
Police have released four videos from the incident, one of which shows the officer lying on top of Lyoya as the two scuffled, and then appearing to shoot him in the head.
Prior to the shooting, the men appear to be wrestling on the ground for control of the officer’s taser.
The officer is on paid leave while state police investigate whether to bring charges, authorities have said.
“We want his name,” Sharpton said, continuing that the failure to disclose it was adding “insult to injury.”
At the ceremony, which was broadcast live, Lyoya’s casket rested at the front of the church, draped in the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His family emigrated from there in 2014.
His mother Dorcas rocked gently and wept during a sermon punctuated by gospel singers and music, as well as cheers and standing ovations for some of the speakers.
The family’s lawyer Ben Crump, who has taken a leading national role in advocating for Black victims of police violence, also spoke, repeating his earlier claim that the killing was an “execution” and called for reform.
Sharpton noted that Lyoya was killed on April 4, the anniversary of the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., putting Lyoya’s death in the context of the national civil rights movement. He said Lyoya came to America in search of a better life and “ran int

an America that we know too well.” He urged those gathered to continue to fight for justice, and called for a federal investigation into Lyoya’s killing.
“We can’t bring Patrick back. But we can bring justice in Patrick’s name,” he said.
Sharpton and civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Lyoya family, have frequently joined with mourners to speak at the funerals of Black people killed by police. Sharpton has eulogized George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis sparked a national reckoning on race; Daunte Wright, who was shot during a traffic stop in suburban Minneapolis; Andre Hill, who was killed in Columbus, Ohio; and Andrew Brown Jr., who was killed in North Carolina.
Crump also called for justice Friday, saying “an unnamed police officer escalated a simple misdemeanor traffic stop into a deadly execution.” He said the issue is one of humanity, and he called on federal lawmakers to pass reforms aimed at curbing systemic racism in policing.
Lyoya’s killing was the latest in a grim litany of Black people dying at the hands of police in the United States that has ignited widespread protests against racism and demands for reform.
The push for change drew acute national attention particularly after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on Floyd’s neck until he died in May 2020.
Floyd’s death, which was filmed by a bystander in a video that went viral, sparked months of protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the United States and around the world.