Revolution #009, July 24, 2005, posted at revcom.us
On July 10 an LAPD SWAT team steamrolled into Watts and savagely butchered Raúl Peña and his 18-month-old baby Suzie.
These murdering enforcers have no right to rule the world! The brutal, bloodsucking capitalist system they are sworn to serve and protect has been in effect over us for too damn long. It’s got to stop. Every day in many different ways we see the brutality and misery their rule brings down on the world. And on July 10, in Los Angeles, the LAPD hammered it home again.
One hundred cops took over a neighborhood and surrounded a scared, desperate, and mentally ill man and his baby daughter. Then they cut them into ribbons by firing more than 60 gunshots into an office no bigger than a closet. No one could’ve survived their murderous assault.
They say they came to help, to save lives and protect the people. They even say they wanted to save the baby. This is a cold lie. But it is more than a lie. These are the words of enforcers who think they have the right to gun down the masses of people and walk away to do it again.and again.and again.
We’re sick of their lies and we know what happened. It was cold-blooded murder, plain and simple.
All kinds of people saw what happened. Family members and friends tried to stop it. When Lorraine Lopez tried to plead for the life of her baby daughter and Raúl, who is her life partner, the police drove her away from the scene. They had no interest in anyone doing anything to try to resolve this situation. Their only interest was in blowing him away. They even put a gun to the head of another woman who tried to help by talking to Raúl.
Piling insults on top of lies they turned around and blamed Raúl for his daughter’s death. At first they said Raúl had shot Suzie. Then they said he tried to use Suzie as a human shield. Lies on top of lies.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. County Coroner found that there were three bullets in Suzie’s body—three bullets from police assault rifles. Suzie died from a police bullet in her brain.
The biggest lie was when the police chief said some of his cops were so shaken by what happened that they wished they could trade places with the baby. No!
Why do these police kill like this? It is because they are trained to shoot first and defend their actions later. They are trained to look at the masses of people as “the enemy” and they are trained to think that people like Raúl and Suzie are disposable and dispensable. They are trained to terrorize the people who the system they protect rules over. And they are trained to make it very clear that if anyone dares to defend themselves against their murdering fire—whether they are in a state of mental upset, as Raúl was, or whether they are just defending themselves—that the only ones who have the right to use armed force are the enforcers of this system.
What kind of society would allow an atrocity like this to happen? What kind of system would endorse its enforcers committing a foul murder like this? A bloodsucking capitalist/imperialist society. They do this to keep the oppressed masses and the proletariat in a situation where the capitalist system can exploit them—and if they can’t exploit them today, then they want to make sure they can exploit them tomorrow!
How can anyone look at the murders of Raúl and Suzie and think this system has any legitimacy at all!
These cops had a choice and they chose to kill Raúl and Suzie.
Look, people go off sometimes, they get sick and go off, especially living under all the pressures this society puts people under. That’s what happened to Raúl. We want a new world, a world where people are free from all oppression and their lives matter.
How would we handle something like this in a society where power was in the hands of the proletariat? We’ve seen how this system handled it—they blew Raúl and Suzie away. In a revolutionary society, we would handle a situation like this completely different. Instead of holding a gun on people who wanted to help, we would mobilize the neighborhood to figure out how to handle the situation. Our people’s police would sooner put themselves in danger than kill an innocent person, especially a little child. This is the way the proletariat has handled this kind of thing in the past when it’s been in power and it’s how we will handle that in a future revolutionary society right here in the belly of the beast.
The police terrorize people with murders like this. This time it backfired. In fact, things are cracking open. People are taking to the streets in outrage, and they’re dealing with big questions. People are talking about unity between Blacks and Latinos. People are talking about changing the world, and they’re looking for leadership.
We, the Revolutionary Communist 4, know this. We’re in Los Angeles to speak to people about what needs to be done and how to do it. We’re going to be dealing with people’s hardest questions about why the world is the way it is and what needs to be done to totally transform it. It’s going to take millions of people rising up in revolution and a communist understanding of the world to get beyond the misery and degradation this system brings down on people and create an entirely different future.
We’re going to bring to people the leadership we have to realize this future—Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party. And we’re going to challenge people to break with the things that stand in the way of them becoming emancipators of humanity.
“Not a one of them, not a one of them went into that situation with the intent to hurt anyone.”
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
“Officers used as much restraint as humanly possible.”
LAPD Assistant Chief McDonald.
“All this tragedy falls on Mr. Peña.”
LAPD Chief Bratton.
From the time the police arrived, they were on a mission to kill. Throughout the afternoon, relatives and friends repeatedly tried to get through police lines to talk to Raúl, but the police refused to consider any outcome besides a massacre of anyone found inside the car dealership where Raúl Peña was.
“All that excessive force was totally unnecessary. They could have let the family negotiate. My uncle was trying to talk to them, but they wouldn’t let him through. He personally called his aunt, talking about he needs a family member, he needs somebody to talk to, and he just hung up the phone. She immediately drove down here. The police didn’t let her through from 103rd St. They could have at least let the someone else talk to him, talk him out of it.”
“They wouldn’t let us through to talk to him. Mostly all my uncles tried. But they just ignored them. They told them to back off.”
Suzie’s brother and Raúl’s stepson Carlos
“I came down there. The police ran me off. I told them, ”My baby is in there, let me get her out.’ They were already pointing their guns inside when I got there. They ran me off, telling me, “Get out of here!’ The neighbor says that a cop was behind me with a pistol pointed at me.”
“He called me before all the shooting, and they didn’t let me go in to him. I told the police, ”It’s a moment of depression. I told them in Spanish and I told them in English, “He’s depressed. He needs help. Please, he needs help.’ They didn’t understand. They didn’t listen. They came for no other reason than to shoot and shoot.”
Lorraine Lopez, Raul’s partner
“[Peña] was armed with one weapon and was randomly shooting into the street.”
L.A. Times repeating the police account, July 11, 2005.
“They said he was shooting at civilians. How could he have shot at civilians when they kept everyone inside their houses, and this whole area from 108th to 103rd was blocked off? Where were the civilians? They weren’t walking around here. He was inside an office. Like he can see through walls.”
Carlos
“Suzie, who the coroner previously reported was killed by a single shot to the head, was also wounded ”below her left knee and to her outer left calf. . . .’ Suzie was found dressed in a yellow shirt, lavender skirt, lavender sandals and a diaper."
L.A. Times, July 16, 2005
“I know Raúl and Suzie personally. My son played with Suzie. He loved his daughter more than anything. We want to make it known that he was a good person.”
Rudy, a neighbor in his 20s
“He only needed more help. He needed a psychologist. He needed somebody to negotiate with him. But the police didn’t do that. They just rushed in. They didn’t care about the ”poor little baby.’ They’re just lying. They’re always changing their story. They’re blaming him."
Juan Carpio, cousin of Raúl Peña
COME TO THE RC4 TOUR
Saturday, July 23, at Cal State, Dominguez Hills
(1000 E. Victoria St. in Carson, CA) at 2 p.m.
BE THERE and bring everyone you know who hates the way we have to live.