ACTIVIST EDITORIAL
DOMESTIC DISARMAMENT

The YouthPeace contingent (l-r, Christina Soto, Jorge Maxwell, Jane Guskin, Paul Bendich) at an April 7 Rally for Racial Justice in New York City that protested ever-increasing police brutality nationwide, focusing on the tragic shooting the day before of 16-year-old Kevin Cedeno. Photo by David Littlesmith.

DISARM THE POLICE, we thought—not for the first time—on the day of Kevin Cedeno’s funeral.

The War Resisters League has always focused on disarming the military as the best way to end war and promote justice. But this ongoing wave of police violence, this six-year trail of murders and assaults, renews our commitment to eliminate all weapons, including those carried by the police.

We mean, of course, the well-publicized police brutality cases from the 1991 videotaped beating of truckdriver Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department to the fatal shooting April 6 in New York City of 16-year-old Cedeno. It constitutes a national epidemic: three fatal shootings within six weeks by police in New York alone—of Jose Antonio Sanchez Feb. 22 and Donald Davidson March 22 before young Cedeno April 6. After the public outcry at the acquittal of Francis Livoti, the officer accused of killing Anthony Baez, we imagined the New York City police, at least, would become more sensitive to community concerns; instead they became more and more cavalier.

So did New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. After acknowledging a medical examiner’s report indicating that Kevin Cedeno had been shot in the back by police, Giuliani urged "people of good will and neutrality [to] keep an open mind."

Neutrality? Statistics of New York City’s own Civilian Complaint Review Board indicate that the police are not ‘neutral’: the majority of complaints are by people of color against white officers.

As to their propensity toward violence, the National Association of Police Chiefs is lobbying against the recently passed federal Gun Control Act barring those convicted of domestic violence from carrying guns, arguing that the law would take 60,000 U.S. police officers off the streets.

Police brutality is a national problem and a national disgrace. For nearly 75 years, the War Resisters League has challenged the government’s use of violence. Whether violence by the military or violence by the police, the loss of life is not acceptable—and must be stopped.

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