Gainesville: International Student Shot in Head By University Police

Tuesday, March 16 2010 - Infoshop News
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20100316225651588

Gainesville cops strike again. On Tuesday March 2nd, when an international graduate student, Kofi Adu-Brempong was having a "nervous breakdown" in his apartment, a concerned neighbor phoned 9-1-1. The University of Florida Police Department responded not by bringing in mental health workers to stabilize the situation, but by breaking down his door, shooting him twice with a taser, three times with bean-bag shotgun shells, and once in the face with an M-4 (a combat-grade automatic rifle) - all reportedly in 30 seconds. Kofi Adu-Brempong is now in the hospital in critical condition, and due to the assumption that anyone having a mental breakdown is a threat, he is facing criminal charges for possessing a weapon (his cane that he uses to walk due to his polio).

This is not the first time the UFPD has acted in blatantly disgraceful ways. You may recall the 2007 incident in which officers repeatedly tased a student when he refused to sit down during a Q&A session with John Kerry. This incident involves those same, now infamous, officers. And one of those same officers, the one who shot Kofi, was recently involved in an incident in which he and other off-duty officers drove drunk through a black neighborhood throwing eggs at pedestrians. This paints Kofi's case as an obvious product of racism. Why is he still 'serving' on the force?

This near-fatal shooting of Kofi has happened just months after Gainesville police repeatedly tased a party-goer during what has improperly been deemed the "FEST Riot," an incident which sparked the formation of a grass-roots organization called Alachua Committee Against Brutality. ACAB has been working tirelessly to implement a 'citizen's police review board' to ensure that officers involved in violent incidences like these are off the streets for good. This sort of thing happens all the time in neighborhoods of color. Police brutality is unfortunately a constant threat to many people living in Gainesville. It's when it happens on campus, or to someone in the activist community, that public attention gets drawn to it. It's in acknowledging this reality that people are organizing. Our goal is to address police brutality in it's totality, not just in the occasional case in which a student is involved.

Today, weeks after Kofi's tragic shooting, 500+ students rallied in support of Kofi and his family. Several demands were brought to UF President, Bernie Machen. The demands were as follows:

-Drop all charges against Kofi.

-Set up an independent investigation of the case, and of the actions of the UFPD.

-Suspend the officers involved, without pay, and with termination pending the outcome of the review process.

-That mental health issues and procedures be more thoroughly addressed by the university.

Please stand in solidarity with Kofi and the University of Gainesville community by spreading the word about this tragic incident so that it cannot get swept under the rug like the last few have. Though it's far from a solution, you can join the Facebook group in support of Kofi here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=w...6549896343