Bay Area Residents Demand Disbandment of School Police after the killing of Raheim Brown

Wednesday, demonstrators packed Oakland Unified School District’s monthly board meeting to demand the board be held liable in the killing of twenty-year-old Raheim Brown by Oakland School Police at Skyline High School in January.

More than one hundred Bay Area residents rallied in front of the OUSD building on 2nd Ave and e10th Street in Oakland to call for the immediate disbandment of the school police and the firing of Officers Barhin Bhatt and Jonathan Bellusa who shot Brown multiple times after claiming he brandished a screw driver. The only civilian witness on the scene, Tamisha Stewart, says Bellusa and Bhatt murdered Brown after calling him racist epithets, that Brown was unarmed and not a threat to the police.

Brown’s mother, Lori Davis, who co-organized Wednesday's rally with the support of Idriss Stelley Foundation, noted that Bellusa was hired by Oakland School Police after he was let go from OPD following concerns stemming from his questionable use of force.

Protesters cited the recent cop killing of Mark Duggan in London last Thursday that sparked a number of rebellions in the city and urged Oakland to rise up and challenge a global system that empowers police to murder civilians with impunity.

A six-year-old Oakland student present at the rally told the board that he didn’t “want to be scared of the police” at school. The board had no comment.



****August 20th, there will be a demonstration organized by Idriss Stelley Foundation at San Francisco City Hall calling for a Bay Area wide coalition of individuals and networks fighting against police brutality. Organizers hope to create a police accountability taskforce. Speakers will begin at 2:30pm.

Idriss Stelley Foundation was founded by Stelley’s mother, Mesha Irizarry, after Stelley was killed by SFPD in 2001.