The camera crew was not inside the house when the girl was hit. To me, thats like writing about the surf conditions in the Gaza Strip. [41][44][45][46] Because of Mertilla Jones's outburst, the judge stopped the trial until September 29. There are no fewer than two TV dramas, two documentaries, and three reality programs being filmed here. What the hell you doing up here for? A retrial began on September 23, 2014 but on October 3, 2014, it was declared a mistrial after a second jury deadlocked on a verdict. What occurred next has been disputed by police officers, bystanders, and neighboring residents. [38] There are two elementary schools in the area, both in desperate need of a lawnmower and a can of paint. He was charged twice with involuntary manslaughter, but both cases ended in mistrials. Then they said he ran out the back of the house, even though there is no back door. In Detroit, only 1 in 3 kids will graduate from high school. There were even toys on the lawn. Assistant prosecutor Rob Moran told the judge that the misdemeanor was being dropped in the "best interests of justice." February 24, 2023. It regards itself as the temple of a new gospel of progress, to which I shall venture to give the name of Detroitism.. These girls are the lucky ones. IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the morning of May 16 and the neighbors say the streetlights were out on Lillibridge Street. The day I visited, a Hollywood starlet (PDF) was tailing the doctor, studying for her role as the medical examiner in ABCs new Detroit-based murder drama Detroit 1-8-7. They were restless and agitated and pulled at the collars of dress blues that didnt seem to fit. I lingered a moment, backing out while taking it in: the bracelet, the liquor, the blood, the gun, the Ho-Hos, the cheapness of it all. Nevertheless, Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans issued a statement May 18. It means uncertainty and abandonment and psychopathology. The appellatecourt ruledthe presiding judge in Jones'case hadn'tadequately answered jurors' questionsduring deliberations. They threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of the lower unit and kicked open its wooden door, which was also unlocked. In this way, what happened to J Cole's daughter? That factory closed in 1956 and was left to rot, pulling down the East Side, which pulled down the city. Its always like that. Im not representing the father; Im speaking for the daughter. He also pointed out that while Jones remains a person of interest in JeReans murder, he has not been arrested. The accident has led to outrage in Detroit, directed at police. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. He was shot in the head and killed last year. She was seven years old. What the fuck you looking at?. As recently as this week, Fieger said in a press release, thatto date, theCity of Detroithas refused to participate in good faith in any resolution regarding Aiyana's death and continue to deny the family justice. Why you do this to me? [51] She was buried on the grounds. Both trials ended with hung juries. Clutching his juice in one hand and two dollars in the other, JeRean staggered across Mack Avenue and collapsed in the street. In Detroit, the official response time of an ambulance to a 911 call is 12 minutes. On January 28, 2015, the remaining charge on Weekley, a misdemeanor for careless discharge of a firearm causing death, was dismissed. Sometimes they come in a Crown Victoria with only a defibrillator and a blanket, because there are no other units available. Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones, was close by. Thats one less knucklehead driving around looking to do a drive-by., His approach was successful, with murder dropping more than 20 percent in his first year. The jury stall resulted in seven voting "not guilty" and five voting "guilty". [2], After a one-year internal and federal investigation, on October 4, 2011, a grand jury indicted Weekley on involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment with a gun. I began to get calls from reporters around the world wondering what Detroit was like, what was happening here. In 2010 Aiyana MoNay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killedduring a raid that was conducted by the Detroit,Michigan Police Departments Special Response Team. What did? Whenever I see a person who died of violence or misadventure, I think about the dead man with the open eyes on the dirty floor of the liquor store. It was unlocked. "My sugar is going up from stress. The sad and confusing circumstances of the murders of JeRean Blake and Officer Huff, both black, robbed Sharpton of some of his customary indignation. He computerized daily crime statistics, created a mobile strike force commanded by young and educated go-getters, and dispatched cops to crime hot spots. [47], On September 29, Weekley's lawyer asked the judge for a mistrial, citing Mertilla Jones's conduct on the stand the week before. People involved. With Chief Evans vacationing overseas with a subordinate, Fieger ran wild, holding a press conference where he claimed he had seen videotape of Officer Weekley firing into the house from the porch. The flower shop is just a pile of bricks now, but despite what the Arab told me, I did not forget what I saw. The slap caused the gun to fire with the bullets striking young Aiyana in the head and killing her instantly. Fieger responded by saying he does not have the supposed video,[57] which he claims was made by the A&E Network reality show The First 48. A dollhouse sits in an empty lot not far from where Aiyana was shot by the police officers storming her home.It was a total fuck-up, the official said. The police have been working under a federal consent decree since a 2003 investigation found that detectives were locking up murder witnesses for days on end, without access to a lawyer, until they coughed up a name. The ones pictured here are all found on one block. JeReans crime? In 2019, Jones' family agreed to an $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement against the city of Detroit in connection with the raid. There is speculation that the attending television crew may have increased the incentive for a glamorised, military-style operation. But McNeal messed upshe admits as much. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was seven years old and asleep on a couch with her grandmother when Detroit police raided their east side home looking for a murder suspect in 2010. Thats a hell of a pair of bookends, I offered. The president of the school board, Otis Mathis, recently admitted that he had only rudimentary writing skills shortly before being forced to resign for fondling himself during a meeting with the school superintendent. No Glue or Lace Hiring Black Folks. Evans brought a refreshing honesty to a department plagued by ineptitude and secrecy. In an echo of deaths at police hands that rocked the US last year, including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York, Officer Weekley is white and Stanley-Jones was black. Weekley will not go to a third trial. "(Jones') parole guideline score placed him in the high probability of parole range," Gautz said in an email. His seven-year-old daughter, Aiyana Mo'nay Stanley-Jones (PDF), slept on the couch as her grandmother watched television. A woman was in his car, the motor running. As the black population grew, so did black frustration over poor housing and rock-fisted police. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal . But she added: "I hope he does the right thing when he gets outand triesto help these other young Black males out here;tell them about lifeand tell them what he did.". The Jones family also sued Weekley and the Detroit Police Department in 2015. As it turns out, he was filming a pilot for his own reality show, entitled The Chief. As for the struggles of a generation of living people, the murder of a hundred children, they ask me: Whats new in that?. But JeRean never went to prom, much less the Afghanistan theater, because he couldnt clear the killing fields of Detroit. The department decided to withdraw him from active duty shortly after the shooting on May 16, 2010. "[27] His trial was scheduled for October[28] and finally took place in June 2013 but resulted in a deadlocked jury. No one cared much about Detroit or its industrial suburbs until the Dow collapsed, the chief executives of the Big Three went to Washington to grovel, and General Motors declared bankruptcy100 years after its founding. Was Detroit an outlier or an epicenter? He gave her $800 for funeral costs. Then Evans own driver shot a man last October. A half-dozen masked officers of. Based on the findings from a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in June 2014 and entitled War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing, which looked at thousands of documents from police departments across the country, Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the ACLUs criminal law reform project, says needlessly deploying Swat teams is part of a trend among nationwide police forces which increasingly [see] themselves as military tactical units. [6][7][8] On October 10, the judge declared a mistrial due to jury deadlock. A few minutes after that, JeReans mother, Lyvonne Cargill, arrived and got behind the wheel of the car that friends had dragged him into. Completed in 1917, the school, attended by white students at the time, was considered so far out in the wilds that its athletic teams took the nickname Jungaleers.. The police were . Then eight, then eleven. But the real mystery behind Officer Huffs murder is why Gibson was out on the street in the first place. Two years later he was sentenced to an additional 12 months for violating . Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands. The kids are dropping like fliesespecially young black malesand hes got nothing but useless words.. You might blame postwar industrial policies that sent the factories to the suburbs, the rural South, and the western deserts. The official version was that two men were walking in the middle of a street on the East Side when Evans and his driver told them to walk on the sidewalk. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder suspect after throwing a flash grenade to confuse anyone inside. Which is what he was doing at this house, authorities contend, when he put three bullets in Officer Huffs face. Final charges against Joseph Weekley, a police officer who shot dead a 7-year-old girl, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, in Detroit in May 2010, were dismissed on Friday, leaving a family bereft and raising serious concern among national groups over an increasingly militarized police force. These Wigs Install in Seconds. Aiyana's mother Dominika Stanley, and paternal grandmother Mertilla testified, and both had "emotional outbursts." No one can answer that fully. By wit and will, he managed to make it through. We noticed you have an ad blocker on. In 2010 Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killed during a raid that was conducted by the Detroit, Michigan Police Department's Special Response Team. The family of a 7-year-old girl who was fatally shot during a May 2010 police raid is suing the Detroit officer involved in the incident, Detroit News reports.. Newspapers made little of ituntil the US Attorney revealed that the federal monitor of the decree was having an affair with the priapic mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was forced to resign, and now sits in prison convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. Even if you check the TT's of each city Aiyana is nowhere to . JeRean balled up his tiny fist. But there is no money; the struggling school system has a $363 million deficit. That year, the police said there were 306 homicidesuntil I began digging. One ran off. Now, Jones family attorney Geoffrey Fieger and the city of Detroit confirm theyve settled the case for $8.25 million. Coco Jones has lived many lives. [2] Her death drew national media attention[3] and led U.S. Representative John Conyers to ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a federal investigation into the incident. On his desk is a bronze bust of Geoffrey Fieger. But according to a witness, he said nothing. An Arab family owned the store, and one of the menthe one with the pocked face and loud voicewas talking on the telephone, but I remember no sounds. His weapon fired a single shot, the bullet striking Aiyana in the head and exiting her neck. Danny Wilcox Frazier is a contributing photographer for Mother Jones. Once at Aiyanas graveside, Charles Jones released a dove. But Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally shot Aiyana in the head, killing her. Evans driver dropped him with a single shot. First published on January 30, 2015 / 4:13 PM. Family: 7-year-old shot by police was asleep. More than 4,000 people attended Officer Huffs funeral at the Greater Grace Temple on the citys Northwest Side. You might blame it on the urban renewal and interstate highway projects that rammed a freeway down the middle of Paradise Valley, displacing thousands of blacks and packing the Negro tenements tighter still. As officer Joseph Weekley walks free, another community is demanding answers about the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. I saw the tape and wrote about its existence after the killing of Aiyana, but the story went nowhere until two months later, when someone in City Hall leaked a copy to the local ABC affiliate. The graduation rate for Detroit schoolkids hovers around 35 percent (PDF). The change to "Murder of Aiyana Jones" may have been disputed for good reason, but the current one is both neutral and standard (see Death of Ian Tomlinson). His murder led to the police raid that killed Aiyana.With large swaths of the city rewildingempty lots are returning to prairie and woodland as the city depopulatesSoutheastern was slated to absorb students from nearby Kettering High this year as part of a massive school-consolidation effort. It is like that all over Detroit, where whole blocks regularly go dark with no warning or any apparent pattern. When I was a teenager, my mother owned a struggling little flower shop on the East Side, not far from where Aiyana was killed. Final charges against Joseph Weekley, a police officer who shot dead a 7-year-old girl, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, in Detroit in May 2010, were dismissed on Friday, leaving a family bereft and. [2], After the shot was fired, Weekley reported to his sergeant that a woman inside had grabbed for his gun. According to the police, Officer Joseph Weekley was the first police officer to enter the home. January 7, 2022 . He won't be in the field. They killed a child and then they lied about it.. Thats good news until you realize that in Detroit, some 500 fires are set every single month. Word of the free milk and honey made its way down South, and the poor Negros and hillbillies flooded in. Then she introduced me to her 14-year-old son DeErion, whose remains sat in an urn on the mantel. So there should have been a parade with confetti and tanks of lemonade, but instead, the complaints about overaggressive cops began to roll in. The city filled with people from all over the world: Arabs, Appalachians, Poles, African Americans, all in their separate neighborhoods surrounding the factories. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder. I went to visit Cargill, who lived just around the way. Aiyana was severely burned and then shot in the head and neck by an unidentified police officer standing on the porch. Another cruiser with two officers responded as well. Detroit grew restless. At the time Owens was the boyfriend of Joness aunt LaKrystal Sanders, who was also living at the house. what happened to aiyana jones. Evans was fired. To avoid the embarrassment of being the nations perpetual murder capital, the police department took to cooking the homicide statistics, reclassifying murders as other crimes or incidents. Owens sped two blocks back to Lillibridge and gathered up a posse, according to his statement to the police. [9][10] The day Barrens cleaned out his desk, a burglar cleaned out Barrens house. During the second trial, Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway dismissed the most serious charge, involuntary manslaughter, saying there was insufficient evidence. For community members and advocates, the bigger question is why a Swat team was deployed in the first place. what happened to aiyana jones. Owens got there first and shot JeRean clear through the chest with Lil James gun. I called the fire department to ask for its statistics. Over 10 years ago, Detroit police executed a nighttime raid at a home on the city's east side in search of a murder suspect. [61][62][63], In May 2016, BlackMattersUS[64][unreliable source?] What happened after that is a matter of conjecture, as Detroit officials have had problems getting their stories straight. So bad is it for Detroits children that Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last year, I lose sleep over that one.. The Detroit chapter of the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) and Black Lives Matter Detroit organized the rally on what would have been her 14th birthday. Im trying to find him, Sheffield complained. The lawsuit asserts that police were outside of the home where they "blindly fired random shots," and one of the bullets fatally struck the 7-year-old child in the neck. Around the way on one block unit and kicked open its wooden door, which also... 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