The New Orleans man, 22-year-old Adolph Grimes III, traveled to his grandmother's home near the French Quarter in order to celebrate New Year's Eve with his fiance and their 17-month-old son. Three hours after arrival, around 3 a.m., he was found dead a block from the front door.Two things.
The Orleans Parish coroner said Grimes was shot 14 times, including 12 times in the back.
"This violence has to stop. My child's death will not be meaningless. He did not die in vain," said Grimes' mother, Patricia Grimes.
An editorial in The Times-Picayune said the shooting "demands answers."
Despite the fact that the seven officers involved in the incident have been reassigned, Superintendent Warren Riley has refused to answer "fundamental questions" about the shooting and maintains that Grimes fired upon his men first.
Several dozen people protested the New Orleans Police Department on Thursday morning to demand justice for Grimes' death.
A mix of people walked paced in front of a police station carrying signs with slogans like "Down with the government" and shouting to passers-by "You could be next!"
A group of black ministers and advocates has called for the department to be purged of "trigger-happy" officers and the Grimes family's attorney, Richard Jenkins is certain an investigation will show rogue cops and sloppy police work.
"I just think it was some bad officers who were out there and imposing their will on the community," Jenkins said.
One, you get shot in the back, it suggests your back was to the person with the gun and you're in the process of getting away. If Grimes was running, I'm thinking it would take one, maybe three bullets max in the back to bring the guy down under any circumstances. Seven officers were involved in the shooting. It's entirely possible all seven fired two shots at Grimes and hit. It's entirely possible all seven officers had an open shot at Grimes and were all shooting at the same time...but twelve bullets at pistol range on a target moving away suggests to me Grimes was shot, fell face down, and then an officer or two emptied his gun into Grimes's back.
Two, the worse the economy gets, the more of this we're going to see in America's cities. If the national average of the "real unemployment rate", what the Labor Department calls the U6 number, which is the collection of all the folks out of work, no longer looking for work, or underemployed, is now at 13.5%, then there are places in America where that number is much, much higher. I'm betting NOLA is one of them. There are places in this country where hope and change cannot come fast enough.
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