April 16, 2004
Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (GA)

SCLC REQUESTS PROBE OF BLACK MEN'S DEATHS 'WE HAVE TO HOLD LAW ENFORCEMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS,'LEADER SAYS
Associated Press

ATLANTA --- The group partly founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is calling for the state of Georgia to investigate the deaths of several black men they say may have been killed unlawfully at the hands of law enforcement officials.

Surrounded by the families of men killed either during arrests or while in jail, leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said Thursday that Georgia needs to do more to get to the bottom of what they call a troubling trend.

''We're not here to say the police are bad all the time, because we know they're not,'' said the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, interim president of the group founded by King and others in 1957. ''But we have to hold law enforcement responsible for their actions.''

Shuttlesworth called on Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker to create a task force to study deaths that occur in police custody. Russ Willard, a spokesman for Baker, said the attorney general had received the request Thursday afternoon and was reviewing it.

The organization also plans to produce a national report documenting questionable deaths in police custody before its 2004 convention in Jacksonville, Fla., and to push for stricter state and federal laws and fines for unlawful deaths that occur in police custody.

The group's leaders said they requested a list of people who have died in police custody from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, but were told that no list exists. GBI spokesman John Bankhead said the bureau does not investigate every police shooting or inmate death in the state.

''The reason we get involved in these situations is at the request of the sheriff or chief of police,'' Bankhead said. ''There's nothing automatic about it.''

For that reason, he said, the agency has no comprehensive list of deaths that occur at the hands of law enforcement officers.

The civil rights group cited recent deaths ranging from that of Surafel Assaminew, a native of Ethiopia shot 15 times by Cobb County police last year, to Dexter Brown, a Tifton native whose mother said he died of what jailers called a suicide just hours after he assured her he was guilty of no crime.

''It was like a nightmare,'' said a tearful Colleen Brown, Dexter Brown's mother, of her son's death in the city jail in Nashville, in south-central Georgia about 50 miles north of the Florida line.

Brown's death remains under investigation. A grand jury investigation cleared the officers who shot Assaminew, saying deadly force was justified.

WALKER SHOOTING CITED

The Kenneth Walker shooting on Interstate 185 in Columbus is among the deaths the Southern Christian Leadership Conference calls "questionable" and wants the Georgia attorney general to investigate.

Walker was riding with three friends in a GMC Yukon on Dec. 10 when he was fatally shot by former sheriff's Deputy David Glisson during a traffic stop.

The 39-year-old Columbus man and friends Warren Beaulah, Anthony Smith and Darryl Ransom were pulled from their vehicle during the stop, which occurred after law enforcement officers spotted the men leaving an Armour Road apartment under surveillance for drug activity. During that process, Walker was shot twice in the head with the deputy's H&K MP-5 tactical submachine gun.

No drugs or weapons were found on any of the men, and no charges were filed.

From staff reports