Houston: Pig Firing Squad Executes Nicolas Chavez

May 1, 2020 | revcom.us

On the night of April 21, a small platoon of cops from the Houston Police Department (HPD) fired a barrage of bullets into 27-year-old Nicolas Chavez.

The pigs who surrounded Chavez had already shot him with tasers, bean bags, and possibly bullets. A blurry video shows Nicolas on his knees and flailing his arms. He didn’t move towards anyone, and no one was within several feet of him. Suddenly, with no warning, a burst of at least a dozen shots rang out, and Nicolas Chavez lay bleeding to death on the pavement.

The Cover-Up

A short article on the shooting of Nicolas Chavez appeared in the Houston Chronicle on April 23 but did not mention his name. It said HPD chief Art Acevedo claimed “the officers opened fire when he (Chavez) started ‘charging’ at them.” This was a shameless lie.

Normally, that’s where this would have ended. Across this country, thousands of people—disproportionately Black, Latino, and Native American—have been murdered by cops. Then almost always, the cops get away with it, and the media echoes their lies. For over a week nothing came out publicly about the police execution of Nicholas Chavez—until a bystander’s video circulated on some social media, and Houston’s TV stations covered it.  

Police claim they responded to a call about a man running in front of cars on a nearby freeway. They say Chavez wanted to commit “suicide by cop,” that he had a piece of “sharp rebar” that he used to cut himself, and that he threatened the pigs who pursued him. NO! This was a cold-blooded murder by enforcers who care nothing for human life. Jessica Chavez, Nicolas’s widow, told the Chronicle, “I would think that if you get a phone call saying someone is trying to commit suicide, you would try to stop them from committing suicide instead of shooting them and giving them what they want.”

Just Doing Their Job

Even after the video of Nicolas Chavez’s murder came out, Joe Gamaldi, head of the Houston police union, said his fellow pigs “followed the law, they followed their training, and did exactly what is expected of them as Houston police officers.” 

Think of that—a mob of cops riddling the body of a man on his knees with bullets is exactly what this capitalist-imperialist system expects of its enforcers. 

Ask yourself: how many people have been murdered like Nicolas Chavez? How long have cops all across this country gotten away with it? How many lies have been told about the people whose lives they took? How long will this go on?

We need to make an actual revolution that overthrows the system responsible for so much repression and violence, here and all around the world.

The leader of the revolution, Bob Avakian, says:

We have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—

or,

make revolution!

The execution of Nicolas Chavez by the Houston police.