Jamaican Resident Of Poughkeepsie, Another Unarmed Black Man Killed By Police…

I met him at my bar­ber­shop one of the two small busi­ness­es I own and oper­ate in the city of Poughkeepsie. Jamaican to the bone, he came in to get a hair­cut and we became cool after he found out that we were both Jamaicans.
He was a young man who wears the same hair­style as my boys, but he was kin­da dif­fer­ent he talked to me about how I felt he should wear his hair.
I told him that ulti­mate­ly how he wore the hair on his head and face should not be a barom­e­ter of his char­ac­ter, but that ulti­mate­ly, in the world in which we live peo­ple are judged by appear­ance.
I told him that as a young black man he would be judged even more harsh­ly, so I sug­gest­ed that he get a nice tai­lored look.

After a while, he got him­self a job at the Dominoes piaz­za store mak­ing deliv­er­ies. I had no choice but to be hap­py for him, I had nev­er seen any­one so hap­py get­ting a job deliv­er­ing piaz­za, so his con­ta­gious joy was trans­ferred to me.
He became a reg­u­lar and every time that he came in he would recount where he was in his life, includ­ing the fact that he had start­ed class­es at our local com­mu­ni­ty college.

Maurice Gordon was only 28-years old but he was a hope­ful and ambi­tious young man who did not let cir­cum­stance dic­tate his joy.
He was unmatched in his opti­mism for life. Nothing more so than when he enrolled in col­lege.
Yesterday I was scrolling through some news arti­cle and one caught my eye. In a weird way I may have seen it in a pass­ing glance pre­vi­ous­ly but with all that’s hap­pen­ing I may have just scrolled on by.


Grieving mom demands answers after unarmed black motorist is shot 4 times and killed by New Jersey troop­er on Garden State Parkway

I scrolled back and the image that greet­ed me hit me like a ton of bricks.
No, no, no way, I yelled out to my wife, this must be a mis­take, it can­not be.
My heart pound­ing, I speed-read the arti­cle, unable to come to grips with the fact that a real­ly nice guy could meet his death at the hands of police.
According to (insid​ernj​.com) The case of the troop­er shoot­ing of Maurice S. Gordon of Poughkeepsie, back on May 23, only real­ly resur­faced this week­end thanks to Mr. Gordon’s family’s attor­ney press­ing for more infor­ma­tion from Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. On May 23 the Burlington Times ran a 234-word report that mere­ly stat­ed there was an inves­ti­ga­tion of “a fatal offi­cer-involved shoot­ing that occurred along the Garden State Parkway” that hap­pened on a stretch “of the Garden State Parkway in the town­ship [Bass River]. One male civil­ian is dead.” There was no ref­er­ence to the col­or of Mr. Gordon’s race, nor the iden­ti­ty of the police agency involved, nor the name of the offi­cer who shot Mr. Gordon.

According to the same report­ing the fam­i­ly’s attor­ney William O. Wagstaff III, has been unable to get even the most basic infor­ma­tion from the inves­ti­gat­ing author­i­ties in the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
Mr. Wagstaff con­firmed to jour­nal­ists that he was trou­bled that it took him nine days “of bad­ger­ing” New Jersey’s Attorney General to see even the lim­it­ed por­tion of the video the state pro­vid­ed to the fam­i­ly. He said that he was at a loss to under­stand why the fam­i­ly had been denied access to the full video and the basic details like where Mr. Gordon actu­al­ly died.
The Gordon fam­i­ly lawyer said he was also con­cerned that despite the 2019 direc­tive by Attorney General com­mit­ting to con­duct inde­pen­dent and trans­par­ent probes of police-involved shoot­ings, [the fact this case involved a state troop­er meant that “what we have here is a state lawyer inves­ti­gat­ing the state police].”

It is no secret that the New Jersey state police have been accused of being one of the most racist police agen­cies in the United States.
And so, ques­tions about whether this is yet anoth­er coverup of the unlaw­ful killing in the state of New Jersey which will result in the state inves­ti­gat­ing itself and arriv­ing at the con­clu­sion that it did noth­ing wrong abounds?
These prac­tices of pulling motorists over at all times of the night, leave peo­ple, and in par­tic­u­lar black peo­ple, at the com­plete mer­cy of racist crim­i­nal cops.
States have giv­en the pow­er to police to con­duct traf­fic stops on motorists, argu­ing that traf­fic stops have yield­ed large finds in illic­it drugs and oth­er con­tra­band. What they do not tell you is that these stops are cash cows that are used to fund police depart­ments and in many cas­es used to fund budgets.

When the racism in American police depart­ments is fac­tored into the mix, a black man trav­el­ing on America’s road­ways, is in extreme per­il of being mur­dered by police who most assured­ly will nev­er be held account­able for their crimes.
There are no words to express the anger I feel at the tak­ing of this young man’s life, par­tic­u­lar­ly because he was so hope­ful and excit­ed about his future.
Regardless of the sto­ry that NJ author­i­ties con­coct and present to the fam­i­ly of Maurice Gordon, for me, it will have zero cred­i­bil­i­ty. The fact that they refused to release infor­ma­tion to the fam­i­ly’s attor­ney who has a right to know how mis­ter Gordon was killed and by what cop is lit­er­al­ly some­thing one would expect from a back­wa­ter total­i­tar­i­an state.
This was not a young man who was engag­ing in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. His killing is an abom­i­na­tion to every­thing that is right­eous and decent. Those that took his life are abhor­rent crea­tures who deserve no def­er­ence or recog­ni­tion afford­ed human beings.

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»««««««««««««««««<

From: FROM DUTCHESS COMMUNITY COLLEGE

We are sad­dened to share this mes­sage from DCC President Pamela Edington on the death of stu­dent Maurice Gordon:

As the trag­ic events of the past few weeks con­tin­ue to weigh heav­i­ly on our hearts and minds, we have just learned that one of our own, 28-year-old Dutchess Community College stu­dent Maurice Gordon, was killed on May 23 by a state troop­er after a rou­tine traf­fic stop on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. Full details of the inci­dent have not yet been released to the fam­i­ly or their attor­ney, but accord­ing to ini­tial news cov­er­age of the inci­dent, Maurice was unarmed.

A native of Jamaica who moved to the U.S. when he was 19, Maurice was study­ing sci­ence and part of our CSTEP pro­gram. He had been iden­ti­fied as a stand­out who could take advan­tage of research oppor­tu­ni­ties, and was look­ing for­ward to begin­ning this work next semes­ter. By all accounts, Maurice was a smart, involved, affa­ble young man – a lov­ing son and broth­er – who was des­tined for great things. We under­stand his moth­er has trav­eled here from Great Britain to make arrange­ments and to fol­low the inves­ti­ga­tion into her son’s death. Should we become aware of a way in which the DCC cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty can help Maurice’s fam­i­ly, we will let you know.

As we mourn the death of Maurice Gordon, I am ask­ing each mem­ber of our cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty to recom­mit to the goals and val­ues sur­round­ing diver­si­ty that we iden­ti­fied in our five-year strate­gic plan in 2015. Dutchess Community College must be a place where all stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and staff are wel­come and free to thrive, a safe space in which diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion are fos­tered and embraced, and a mod­el com­mu­ni­ty that val­ues every life.

I am sor­ry to have to share this very sad news with you today. Please do some­thing kind in Maurice’s memory.

PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE IN THE INTEREST OF TRANSPARENCY, CALL THE NJ ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE AND DEMAND ANSWERS.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.