Last Saturday, April 30^th, on what would have been his 62^nd birthday, Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (NCAP) sojourned back to Newton, NJ to participate in rally to remember Major Gulia Dale III, a decorated retired veteran who killed by two young Newton Police officers on the 4^th of July, after his wife called the police for help fearing that Major Dale may harm or kill himself.

          “The way that this case was handled was all racist and all wrong from top to bottom,” exclaimed an angry Zayid Muhammad, NCAP’s organizer at the rally.

          “Black man with a gun is how the call went and everything went wrong every step of the way as does always does when it gets racialized like that,” he declared.

          Organizers revealed that Dale had lived in that community for some time and was known to many in the town’s leadership.

          They also revealed that several months prior to the Major Dale’s fateful incident, a white vet was in a mental health crisis and was treated fundamentally different.

          In that incident, the man in crisis was not only armed, he actually fired upon the approaching officers.

          The police response was to cordon off the area of the incident, use mental health supports to talk the man down, and he was then taken into custody unharmed.

          “Why couldn’t they do that for my brother,” asked a heartbroken Valerie Dale Corbett, the Major’s sister and central organizer of the event.

          She even presented a copy of her brother’s autopsy report which cited as the cause of his death ‘Homicide’, the document showed.

          Sussex County officers undergo 40-hour crisis intervention training, working with mental health professionals to learn de-escalation methods during encounters with individuals with special needs.

          They were joined by a caravan of members from the People’s Organization for Progress, led by their chairman Lawrence Hamm, who opened the rally with marked passion.

          “In the death of Gulia Dale, we see all of the contradictions of American history.

          “How is Gulia Dale’s death different  from the Black men who signed up to fight Hitler and Nazism in Germany to then return to their country and be lynched in their uniforms,” he asked pointedly.

           Rick Robinson of the NAACP, Racquel Romans-Henry of Salvation and Social Justice, and several members from Veterans For Peace, also participated.

          Muhammad directed participants to the statewide coalition against police brutality known as NJ Communities for Accountable Policing who will be having discussions examining alternative responses to mental health challenges that are being looked at to prevent tragedies like the Dale incident. They are pushing for major police reform bills in the New Jersey State Legislature as well.

          For more information, call or text 973 202 0745...

CONTACT: ZAYID MUHAMMAD,

NEWARK COMMUNITIES FOR ACCOUNTABLE POLICIN

Picture source
Police killed a Black Army veteran outside his home. His ...