Tag: Police Station

Unfortunately, we are witnessing a new episode of police and institutional racism. It is not an isolated incident in Montornès del Vallès, but is part of a machinery of persecution and criminalization of our migrant and racialized communities, throughout the Spanish territory, including in Catalonia.

Mahamedi was a 22-year-old black man, a resident of Montornès del Vallès, born in Catalonia, son of Gambian parents. This lifelong villager —a former football player in the lower categories of the village team, who worked delivering packages to neighbors as a delivery man— died from gunshot wounds.

It happened last Friday, July 24, at the Local Police headquarters, under the opacity of all the administrations and media outlets that, in unison, rushed to establish a criminalizing narrative, when referring to our neighbor.

The Montornès del Vallès City Council, far from taking steps to inform the family of Mahamadi‘s death and clarify the facts, rushed to issue an institutional statement on social media. They talk about an “incident” at police stations, in which “an armed man” entered the police station, “was shot” by an officer, while “another officer was injured“. They omit to define how the latter was injured, and they do not even mention why a shot caused the death of a local resident. Nor did they communicate with the respect due to his family the violent death of Mahamedi.

We see once again how the media has finished constructing the official narrative, asserting that the young man was carrying a knife to a police station, and that it was an accident. This has given space to the police unions to request more personnel and resources to “prevent these regrettable events” of which police officers are victims, without any mention of the young man who lost his life in the police action.

We are once again faced with the death of a black person, with opacity in communication protocols and undignified treatment, in police stations, which refers us to other cases of police and institutional racism and deaths by gunfire from state security forces.

To clarify the regrettable facts and establish responsibility for the authorship of this death in police custody of the young Mahamedi, we ask:

• Clarification of the facts and why a firearm was used to reduce the victim. How many shots and in what area of the body were fired to cause the death of young Mahamedi?
• To know why the family was not informed of the death at the same time and why questions were asked at the victim’s home in the hours following his death?
• Mahamedi was a well-known neighbor and recognized among his community as a peaceful person. How can the use of firearms to kill and the fact that other forms of restraint were not used be justified?
• We ask the media for responsibility and journalistic rigor. That they do not serve as a hook to criminalize a person without having verified the facts beyond reproducing the police version that criminalizes and dehumanizes the young Mahamedi. Especially, in a context of growing threats and hate speech against Muslim and racialized migrant communities by far-right criminal organizations.

From several anti-racist social groups we demand that the cause of death at our neighbor’s police station be clarified. We demand dignified institutional treatment towards the family and responsibilities, to seek truth, justice and reparation regarding the death of young Mahamedi.