PLEASE pack the courtroom for Tyrell Taylor

*** Spread widely to folks in San Francisco and the Bay Area ***

Note: After tomorrow's court session, we'll send an alert on the trial schedule for next week. Tyrelle is a beautiful young man and well worth your support. Our profound thanks to all who respond by attending and/or spreading the word.

Stand with Tyrelle Taylor as he stands trial

Pack the courtroom for his trial starting Friday, 9am, 850 Bryant

by Mary Ratcliff

In his young life, Tyrelle Taylor has been at the heart of two of the Bay View’s biggest police atrocity stories: the beating of Tyrelle and four other children, age 12-14, on Martin Luther King Day 2002 and the terrible day Tyrelle was shot in the back repeatedly by SFPD “specialists,” or sharpshooters, in 2005.

This Friday, Sept. 7, 9 a.m., at 850 Bryant, Tyrelle will stand trial on charges that better describe what the police did to him. Check the calendar at Department 22 for the assigned courtroom. Public Defender Jeff Adachi is personally representing him. We must pack the courtroom and stand with this young man – our brother, our son – to show our refusal to tolerate police terrorism any longer.

What happened to Tyrelle in 2002 and 2005 is nothing less than police terrorism. Both brutal assaults were committed outdoors in heavily populated Hunters Point in front of many witnesses. The police were clearly trying to teach residents a lesson.

On Martin Luther King Day, when parents pleaded with police to say why they were beating the children – and molesting the girls – the officer in charge explained, “As long as you people are here, we will act like this.” Could we ask for a clearer declaration of ethnic cleansing?

“’They never once said “Freeze” or “Stop,”’” wrote Bay View journalist Apollonia Jordan, quoting a neighbor who witnessed the officers shooting Tyrelle over and over again as they chased him through his housing development on the morning of Sept. 9, 2005.

A neighbor who recorded what she witnessed immediately after it happened, wrote: “There are about six police behind him. They’re everywhere, from the top on Northridge to the bottom of my building running up behind him.

“I yell out his name; he yells back and says, ‘Sister, I can’t run no more They’re trying to kill me.’ …

“So I yell out at him, ‘Rell, keep running. Try to make it to me.’ He’s limping and bleeding bad …

“I’m still hearing guns being fired and I think he got hit by a bullet, because his body jumped forward as if something invisible hit him in the back.”

Tyrelle’s strong spirit and the grace of God kept him alive that day, but his pain was excruciating. I know because the Bay View’s number was one of the few he could reach when, after a few hours in the emergency room, he was locked in a cell at 850 Bryant. Bearing that pain through the long, lonely nights matured him mightily.

“It’s time for us to stand up and fight for our lives and the lives of our children,” Apollonia concluded in her story on the front page of the Sept. 14, 2005, Bay View. “You may not have known Tyrelle, but what happens when the holice attack one of your children or someone close to you?”

In the months Tyrelle has resided in the San Francisco County Jail awaiting trial, he has attended classes and read every book we could send him and more. Read his letter to the Bay View and make up your mind to be in court Friday morning to show the powers that be that in Hunters Point we are standing our ground: We will not be terrorized, we will not be moved and we will not abandon our children.

Tyrelle Taylor’s letter

I have been thinking about many things in life, and now I have found myself in a world of trouble. I’ve been reading a lot and focusing on a lot of things.

I’m ready to move far away and see new things, explore the world and live life. I feel if I go far I wouldn’t get in trouble.

Not that I’m trying to get in trouble, but I can be at the wrong place and things like that, just because I’ve been shot before by the police. So they would harass me just ‘cause.

So I’m ready to leave that environment and live life, stay away from the bull. I have a family to raise. I need to show them some guidance.

I’m sitting right now in my room looking out the window, looking at these houses and people getting out of their cars. They seem so peaceful.

I feel I can do that and I am going to do that. I’m going to make it out of here and live my life. I’m going to show the world.


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