Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone. He was formerly a reporter for The Detroit News. The morning after he was shot, Chaises clippers were mysteriously deposited on his front porch, wiped clean and free of hair. On May 14, 2010, JeRean Blake, a senior at Southeastern High School of Technology and Law was shot and killed near an intersection on Detroits east side. Seconds after entering the house, where the grenade had caused Aiyanas blanket to catch fire, Weekley fired one fatal shot. Police fired a flash grenade through the front window. According to the police, Officer Joseph Weekley was the first police officer to enter the home. I asked him if the way he was raising his daughter, the people he exposed her to, or the neighborhood where they livedwith its decaying houses and liquor storesmay have played a role. I forgive him, but I don't forget what he did.". A former risk manager for the district was indicted for siphoning off $3 million for personal use. His motive, authorities say, was that the teen failed to pay him the proper respect. The house next door to his is rubble smelling of burnt pine, pissed on by the spray cans of the East Warren Crips. "It bothers them," she said. But Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally shot Aiyana in the head, killing her. Outside court, a spokesman for Aiyana's family criticized the judge for her comments. It is not protocol. But I felt unraveling this one death could help diagnose what has gone wrong in this city, so I decided to retrace the events leading up to that pitiable moment on the porch on Lillibridge Street. Thats how its supposed to be done.. 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. Jones was arrested, and though she was quickly released it was not before she and two other family members Aiyanas parents had been forced to sit in their childs blood for hours, Scott said. 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. Then eight, then eleven. But JeRean never went to prom, much less the Afghanistan theater, because he couldnt clear the killing fields of Detroit. Weekley was transferred from the Special Response Team to the Criminal Investigations Bureau. But in Evans defense, he seemed to understand one thing: After the collapse of the car industry and the implosion of the real estate bubble, there is little else Detroit has to export except its misery. Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley stands in judge Cynthia Hathaways courtroom in Detroit, in June 2013. He assigned the SWAT team the job of rounding up murder suspects, a task that had previously been done by detectives. The Jones family also sued Weekley and the Detroit Police Department in 2015. Cole's character, it turns out, is a drug dealer. The ones pictured here are all found on one block. The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. What killed Aiyana is what killed the people in New Orleans and the rider on the transit in Oakland, and thats police bullets and police arrogance and police cover-up, Jones lawyer said. It is the home of mass-production, of very high wages and colossal profits, of lavish spending and reckless instalment-buying, of intense work and a large and shifting labour-surplus, British historian and MP Ramsay Muir wrote in 1927. I saw him in the face of my sister, who died a violent death in a filthy section of Detroit a decade ago. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley in court in Detroit, Mich. on June 18, 2013 during his first trial. Chief Evans might have survived it all, had he, too, not been drawn to the lights of Hollywood. But the fact is Detroit and its suburbs were dying 40 years ago. Juries twice failed to reach a verdict in Weekleys case, first in June 2013 and then in October 2014. Even Time bought a house on the East Side last year for $99,000. He computerized daily crime statistics, created a mobile strike force commanded by young and educated go-getters, and dispatched cops to crime hot spots. 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. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana that it burned her blanket. [20] He pushed his way inside, protected by a ballistic shield. Evans drivera copgave chase. I think its evil. AS SUMMER DRAGGED on, the story of Aiyana faded from even the regional press. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was 7 years old when she was killed by a single bullet to the head. [39][40], On the second day of trial, September 24, LaKrystal Sanders, who lived on the upper floor of the house where Aiyana was killed, testified. The kids are dropping like fliesespecially young black malesand hes got nothing but useless words.. The city provided clothing, fuel, rent, and $10 every week to adults for food; children got $5. Parts of the Detroit River are now clean enough for swimming. The appellatecourt ruledthe presiding judge in Jones'case hadn'tadequately answered jurors' questionsduring deliberations. A half-dozen masked officers of the Special Response TeamDetroits version of SWATwere at the door, guns drawn. There was no note. . Jones wasgiven a "contingency parole" after completing required prison programs, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said Monday. We believe today's settlement is fair because it balances the needs of Aiyana's family and our responsibility for the city's finances. All rights reserved. A small crowd of agitated black people was gathered on the sidewalk. Technicians are currently working on the problem. I wouldnt wish this on nobody in the world. For community members and advocates, the bigger question is why a Swat team was deployed in the first place. This could be a precedent setting case if the Court . It is the home of mass-production, of very high wages and colossal profits, of lavish spending and reckless instalment-buying, of intense work and a large and shifting labour-surplus, British historian and MP Ramsay Muir. January 7, 2022 . Aiyana was sleeping on the couch next to her grandmother when, just after midnight, Officer Weekley's SWAT team threw a flashbang grenade through the living room window, setting fire to . The walls are covered with photographs of Geoffrey Fieger. Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the police threw the grenade into the wrong apartment. But Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally shot Aiyana in the head, killing her. Many are as fucked up and sad as Aiyanas. 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. "[60], In September 2013, J. Cole published a music video dedicated to Jones for his song Crooked Smile, featuring TLC on YouTube. The story rated three paragraphs in the daily papers, and the media never followed up. 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. Im stuck. What did? The manslaughter trial was declared a mistrial. Were going to pull people over for traffic violations and were going to take their cars if theyre not legal. [31] In June 2013, Howard pleaded "no contest" to the obstruction of justice charge, and the perjury charge was dismissed. One witness had him pegged for 13 years old. But the SWAT team didnt wait. The title is derived from the California penal code for murder: 187. At its peak popularity, 810 fires were set in a three-day span. Weekley still is charged with careless discharge of a firearm causing death in the May 2010 shooting, which happened as police executed a search warrant for a murder suspect. [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. [15], The building was a duplex; Owens's girlfriend LaKrysta Sanders lived in the upstairs apartment, while her mother and Aiyana Jones' grandmother, Mertilla Jones, lived in the downstairs apartment. Plus, grenades are rarely used when rounding up suspects, even murder suspects. Then came the homicide-by-cop of little Aiyana. What? he croaked. "(Jones is) the one who gave (Owens) the gun to kill their brother. They still owe me rent, he said with a face about the Joneses. Officer Joseph Weekley, the lead commandowhod been featured before on another A&E show, Detroit SWATburst into the house. Her parents say they hope Aiyana will be remembered as more than a symbol of heightened tension in a city in crisis. For that he was given simple probation. Jarrette Jones and Iyanna McNeely. On May 21, 2016, nearly six years after Joness death, the Detroit chapter of Black Lives Matter organized the first rally in her memory. Then they said he ran out the back of the house, even though there is no back door. Hes from New York. Sarah Cwiek joined Michigan Radio in October 2009. One of the punks killed him claiming self-defense even though he had the gun and was the aggressor. I called the fire department to ask for its statistics. Killing of Aiyana Jones. Funeral for Chaise Sherrors, JeReans best friend. Even on Lillibridge Street, the outrage has died down. 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. Dr. Carl Schmidt is the chief medical examiner there. If that isnt a record for any major metropolis, it is certainly a record for Detroit. Now Detroit has fewer than 800,000 people, is 83 percent black, and is the only American city that has surpassed a million people and dipped back below that threshold. Why you do this to me? The water in the Detroit River was so bad, it was said you could bottle it and sell it as poison. The psychopathology of growing up in Detroit, he said. The family of Aiyana Jones, the 7-year-old girl accidentally killed by a Detroit police officer during a raid in 2010, has reached settlement with the city o. held a small rally in memory of Jones. [50][bettersourceneeded] The casket was white and was afterwards driven to the grave by horse-drawn carriage. People my mothers age like to tell me about Detroits good old days of soda fountains and shopping markets and lazy Saturday night drives. Jones was born on July 20, 2002, to Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley in Detroit. They were conducting a police raid in search of a murder suspect who lived at that address -- and being filmed for a reality TV show in the process -- when Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally fired his gun. In the witness box in September, Jones said: Im laying there screaming, asking someone to help my granddaughter because he shot her in the head. Answer (1 of 77): A couple of punks confronted an unarmed black man with guns. Oddly enough, that's what supposedly happened to a beautiful 7-year-old girl named Aiyana Jones. In Detroit, a new car costs more than the average house. In fact, there are no chain grocery stores in all of Detroit. For instance, in 2008 a man was shot in the head. His partner took the rear entrance. Weekley claimed Aiyana Jones' paternal grandmother, Mertilla Jones, attempted to slap his MP5 submachine gun, causing it to fire. 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. [6][7][8] Aiyana was buried in a white casket which was driven to her grave site by a horse-drawn carriage. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder. A slender, pimply faced kid, JeRean was not an intimidating figure. Aiyanas pink-robed body was carried away by a horse-drawn carriage to the Trinity Cemetery, the same carriage that five years earlier had taken the body of Rosa Parks to Woodlawn Cemetery on the citys West Side. School wasnt a priority. As officer Joseph Weekley walks free, another community is demanding answers about the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. Seconds after entering the house for swimming clothing, fuel, rent, and $ 10 every to., attempted to slap his MP5 submachine gun, causing it to fire spokesman for Aiyana family. Soda fountains and shopping markets and lazy Saturday night drives going to pull people over for violations. A verdict in Weekleys case, first in June 2013 and then in October 2014 detectives... 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