Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, speaking outside the WSU Law School about the recent killing of young Aiyana Stanley Jones, 7, by the Detroit police. Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking at the school. (Photo: Cheryl LaBash), a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Two Indicted in the Police Killing of Aiyana Stanley Jones in Detroit
Cop who shot to death 7-year-old and TV photographer to stand trial
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Aiyana Stanley Jones, a 7-year-old African American girl, was shot to death during a police raid on a home on Detroit’s eastside on May 16, 2010. The killing sparked outrage throughout the city of Detroit and around the country.
Some 16 months after the shooting and a Michigan State Police investigation, Detroit police officer Joseph Weekly has been indicted. Also charged in the incident is Allison Howard of Boston who was working as a photographer with “The First 48” television program which was filming the raid to be aired.
Weekly has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in Jones’ death and Howard is facing trial on perjury charges. The police said they were raiding the downstairs apartment where Jones was sleeping with her grandmother as part of an investigation into the shooting death of 17-year-old Je’Rean Blake, who was killed two days before in the same neighborhood.
Jones’ father Charles was recently charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Blake. Another man, Chauncey Owens, was arrested the same morning of the death of young Aiyana Stanley Jones in the apartment upstairs from where the killing took place.
The Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee (JAJC) spokesperson Fige Bornu issued a press release in response to the indictments of Officer Weekly and Ms. Howard. The statement reads that “JAJC chairman, Roland Lawrence aka Fige Bornu states, ‘The Aiyana Jones tragedy is a pathetic and heinous symbol of ‘police gone wild,’ and must be held as an end all on how police agencies interact with poor communities of color.’”
Also the JAJC press release says that “The Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee (JAJC) seeks to make sure that Aiyana's father, Charles Jones, is afforded a fair and balanced trial including a mandate that his peer group demographic is represented on his jury.”
The police in Detroit have a long history of brutality and terror inflicted upon the overwhelmingly majority African American community. Despite the fact that the Detroit Police Department since 2003 has been under two U.S. Justice Department consent decrees mandating changes in the use of lethal force and the conditions prevailing in the city lock-ups, the same brutal behavior that resulted in the community outrage that led to the federal intervention remains to this day.
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