Justice For Roy Hoskins

Stop Police Harassment, Brutality and Murder

Jail the Killer Cop!

Sunday, April 29th on Bloom Just south of Luce ar around 8pm, a white Detroit Police Officer, James Wood, shot and killed Roy LeMont Hoskins, a black teenager. Roy was 14 years old.

The police immediately began to line up their stories ro cover up and whitewash this police murder. The lying TV news has pushed the police cover-up, at first saying that there had been no witnesses other than cops, and then repeating the lie that Roy had a gun in his hand when the police shot him. We will not let this outrage be covered-up. We will not let the police get away with murder. Roy Hoskins could have been any young black person in Detroit.

Justice for Roy Hoskins means that his murderer must be jailed. It means that the City should stop the cover-up, fire the cop, aid his prosecution and provide the family with a generous and public settlement on their civil law suit. Justice also means an end to the daily police harassment and brutality against the working class and poor people of Detroit's black community. Detroit youth are persecuted daily by arrogant, violent and often racist police. For there to be real justice for Roy Hoskins, the presecutions and the victimizations must end.

Only hwne there has been and overwhelmingly display of public outrage has the legal system given the victims of police crime anything even approaching justice.

When 11 yr. old Freddie Vela was murdered by an off-duty Detroit cop on July 22, 1994, the children and youth of 7 mile and Woodward and the Justice For Malice Green Coalition marched on the 12th precinct and occupied the lawn repeatedly, and for a time forced the police out of the neighborhood. Finally after more than a year and a half and many marches and confrontations with the police, the killer cop was convicted of 2nd degree murder and jailed.

If it had not been for the courage and determination of those children and youth, and the leadership of the Justice For Malice Green Coalition, there would have been no charges, no trila, no serious prosecution, no conviction and a murderer of a child would have walked free.

In Detroit and America's other cities, working class people--especially black working class people--are held in jail for nonsense traffic violations all the time, while police harass and assault people regularly with no legal repercussions whatsoever. The inequality is unspeakable.

The children and youth of Detroit will only be safe when the working class people of Detroit can keep the killer cops out of our neighborhoods. If we are going to keep the police from committing more crimes of murder and harassment and collaborating with criminals in our neighborhoods, we must organize worker/community defense committees to get the cops out. The police are part of the problem of crime, not its solution. Only the organization of mass defense committees can stop crime including the criminal activity of the police. There must be be an expansion of quality job opportunities so that young people are not pushed into small-time, no-future positions in the economy. We need real solutions to the problems of unemployment and poverty, not more police from the crime-infested DPD.

The tragedy of Roy Hoskins murder should serve as a catalyst to build an integrated. anti-racist, working class social movement that can put an end to police abuse of working class and poor people.

The names of the victims of police violence in Detroit should sound a rallying cry for justice: Malice Green, Ricardo Gordy, Cornelius Stanley, JJ Hudson, Daverne Riley, Gary Glenn, Jose Ituralde, Mikey Hill, Danny Peters, Jeremy Conn, Freddie Vela,-- and now Roy LeMont Hoskins.