FREDERICK RODRIQUEZ COX, JR.
TENICKA SHANNON
MOTHER OF POLICE
SHOOTING VICTIM
DENOUNCES GRAND
JURY DECISION
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The mother of another fatal police shooting victim in North Carolina blasted a grand jury’s June 1st decision not to indict the off-duty, plainclothes Davidson County sheriff’s detective responsible.
“I was shocked…devastated and let down…,” Tenicka Shannon of High Point said as she vowed that justice will be done in the death of her son, Frederick Rodriquez Cox Jr., 18, last November at a High Point church.
“My son was murdered in a church by a detective!”
Cox was one of many mourners attending the funeral of a teenage murder victim at Living Water Baptist Church on November 8th. After the service ended and the congregation was leaving, a car drove by the church firing shots. Ms. Shannon says her son was heroically opening the door of the church to allow people back in for safety, when the detective opened fire, fatally hitting him four times, twice in the back, according to a subsequent autopsy report.
“He was shot in the back of the neck, which was the fatal shot,” Ms. Shannon confirmed.
It took seven months for the Guilford County District Attorney’s Office to present it’s evidence to a grand jury on Tuesday, June 1st after a questionable probe by the State Bureau of Investigation.
According to a release by the Guilford County District Attorney’s Office, a majority of the 18-member grand jury, citing insufficient evidence to support criminal charges, determined that there was no probable cause to sustain a charge (or true bill) of either voluntary manslaughter, or felony assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.
Last January, the SBI released a preliminary report alleging that “The deputy “observed Cox with a handgun at the time (the deputy) discharged his weapon and other witnesses observed a handgun near Cox after he was shot.”
But in it’s release last week, the Guilford County District Attorney’s Office said, “There was no evidence presented that Cox Jr. was in a gang or that he discharged a weapon,” meaning, as far as many of the witnesses and Cox’s mother is concerned, there was no reason for the plainclothes deputy to fire his weapon at the young man.
“It is a true murderer that’s walking the streets that holds a badge, and does not know [when] to fire his service weapon,” Ms. Shannon said.
“It’s sad and it’s scary.”
Thus, Ms. Shannon assured that a wrongful death suit is forthcoming, and she will be represented by civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump, the so-called “attorney general for Black America” because of his advocacy for the families of Black police victims, and atty. Antonio Romanucci.
“This shameful lack of accountability is something we see all too often when young Black men are unjustifiably gunned down by officers,” Crump and Romanucci said in a statement. “Fred Cox was attempting to help his community, already in the midst of grieving the loss of a loved one, when he was wrongly profiled by police and killed because of it. Law enforcement cannot continue to fire their weapons at Black people blindly and without consequence.”
The NC NAACP is supporting Ms Shannon, as is Rev. Gregory Drumwright of the activist group Justice 4 the Next Generation.
The fact that Fred Cox Jr. died trying to protect others is indicative of the kind of young man that he was, Tenicka Shannon says. Her son was mannerly, and “very protective of women,” she says. “I raised this young man by myself. My husband taught my son to open the door for women.”
Meanwhile, in the Anthony Brown Jr. police shooting case in Elizabeth City, representatives of the N.C. NAACP when to Washington, D.C. last week and met with Asst. U.S. Attorney General Amy Solomon and the Civil Rights Division, delivering a letter requesting a “pattern and practice” investigation of law enforcement in the Pasquotank County region.
Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the MC NAACP said that he and his group were “well received.”
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POLICE KILLED BLACKS TWICE
A S MANY TIMES AS WHITES
IN NC, SAYS REPORT
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
According to a new Harvard University project, African-Americans were twice as likely to be killed by police than whites in North C\arolina between 2013 and 2021.
Furthermore, the project, Mapping Police Violence (https://mappingpoliceviolence.org) a product of the Law Enforcement Demographic Survey and the Washington Post’s police shooting database, revealed that in North Carolina, from 2013 until now, there have been 249 deaths involving law enforcement officers, and rarely has anyone been held legally accountable, with officer prosecutions “extremely rare.”
To be clear, there is no official national database of police related deaths, but rather crowdsources and media compilations.
By the numbers, 35% of those deaths were African-Americans, while only 22% of North Carolina’s population is Black.
Only four officers were actually charged over that time period (three of the charges involved white victims, only one was Black), and 20% of the 94 reporting police departments and sheriff’s offices had staff of sworn officers who were all-white.
In deaths involving firearms, interestingly, the majority of Black victims were not trying to flee, according to the Washington Post.
The low rate of police prosecutions in North Carolina mirrors what is happening in the rest of the country, according to data compiled by researchers. Only 35 police officers were convicted of unjustified shootings nationally between between 2005 and 2019.
When the racial makeup of the police or sheriff’s department does not mirror the community which it is responsible for policing, studies show that use of force incidents go up, and this is especially true in North Carolina when white officers interact with Black citizens from agencies that are virtually all-white.
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STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 06-10-21
FEDERAL APPEALS COURT RULES STATE AG, NOT GOP, SHOULD DEFEND VOTER ID LAW
[RICHMOND, VA.] The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this week ruled that NC state Attorney General Josh Stein, not attorneys hired by Republican legislative leaders in the NC General Assembly, will defend North Carolina’s voter ID law in court. GOP leaders felt strongly that Stein, a Democrat, would not fight vigorously to defend the 2018 law, but a majority of the 15-member federal appellate court disagreed. NCNAACP Pres. Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearnan hailed the decision, issuing a statement saying in part, “"We look forward to bringing our full case to trial in 2022 as we continue to challenge all racially discriminatory impediments to the right to vote in our state amid the rapidly unfolding national fight for our democracy.”
LT. GOV. ROBINSON SAYS WOMEN WHO ARE RAPED MUST RAISE THE CHILD
[GREENVILLE] Black Republican NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson made headlines again last weekend at the NC Republican Parry Convention in Greenville when he made clear during a speech that he believed a woman who is raped is obligated to raise the resulting the child, saying that once a woman becomes pregnant, “..it’s not her body anymore.” Robinson added that his opposition to a woman’s legal right to choose is an issue he will not budge on.
GOP HOUSE AND SENATE LEADERS SAY TAX CUTS WILL BE BUDGET DEAL
[RALEIGH] Though a deal has not been reached yet, NC House and Senate Republicans say the budget they’re woking to hash out will have more tax cuts, and only have 3.45% in spending over their previous proposed spending plan. Reports say expect a deal of no more than $25.7 billion annually for the next two years, beginning in July. That is less than the proposed $27.3 billion offered by Gov. Roy Cooper. Cooper’s proposal includes expansion of Medicaid, while the Republican legislative leaders’ plan doesn’t.
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