Stephen Janis and Mike Silvestri, The Examiner
2008-05-01 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

New York City police officers gunned down Sean Bell on the eve of his wedding in a fusillade of 50 bullets. A Baltimore police officer shot Edward Lamont Hunt twice in the back, even though he was unarmed. Staff at the Bowling Brook juvenile facility in Carroll County held Isaiah Simmons III, 17, face-down for three hours until he stopped breathing.

Now the local NAACP is planning a statewide rally to call attention to these cases  and others, arguing that the innocent people killed by authorities who pledged to protect them should not to be forgotten.

“Remember Edward Hunt was shot in the back along with Bell,” said Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, head of the Baltimore City chapter of the NAACP. “The common thread is someone in authority took the life of people we consider to be innocent.”

Cheatham said the rally, planned to coincide with a protest in New York City over the acquittal of the police officers who shot Bell to death outside a Manhattan strip bar on Nov. 26, 2006, would put pressure on prosecutors and state officials to continue investigations.

“We need letters, faxes and calls to Attorney General (Doug) Gansler on Simmons because the case will not be heard until December 2008,” Cheatham said. Simmons died January, 2007.

 “On [the] Hunt case we need letters, faxes and calls to FBI and to prosecutors.  We need an indictment,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Hunt was shot twice in the back in February in a  shopping center after he pulled away from the officer during a field interview. Witnesses said Hunt was shot after being frisked for several minutes, but the officer countered that Hunt pulled away before he finished frisking him.

But a videotape taken from a nearby convenience store shows Hunt running away from the officer while the officer pursued him, gun drawn.

The NAACP rally is also pleads for a violence-free summer.

“We can’t talk out of one side of our mouth about the police when we’re killing ourselves,” Cheatham said.

“It’s needed in general because obviously violence is rampant throughout the city,” said Danielle Carter, Simmons’ sister. “But I think it’s important to make the distinction that there’s violence that happens in the streets, but there’s also violence that happens in institutions.

“Violence that happens in institutions isn’t always addressed.”

sjanis@baltimoreexaminer.com

msilvestri@baltimoreexaminer.com