VivirLatino

Last week marked the end of criminal cases surrounding the racist killing of Luis Ramirez. Last Thursday, A jury issued a split verdict against three former Shenandoah police officers accused of obstructing justice in the investigation of a fatal beating. Former police Chief Matthew R. Nestor was found guilty of falsifying records, hindering a federal investigation. Former police Lt. William Moyer was found guilty of making false statements.

Perhaps more importantly than the charges the former officers were found guilty of is what they were acquitted of. Former police Chief Matthew R. Nestor, Former police Lt. William Moyer, and Former police Officer Jason R. Hayes were all found not guilty of conspiracy.

While Nestor faces up to 20 years in prison and Moyer faces up to five years incarcerated, this should be interpreted as injustice for multiple reasons. One, after the horrendous killing of Mexican immigrant/hermano Luis Ramirez, we have continued to see attacks on the Latino community, especially the immigrant Latino community. The list of our dead continues to grow, Marcelo, Jose, Brisenia. The lack of a conviction on the conspiracy charges supports the claim that walls do indeed kill those in our communities. In this case it was the “blue wall of silence” The blue wall is a collective process embedded in police forces around the United States. It allows criminal officers to cover their tracks and threatens those within their ranks who would attempt to break that wall with labels like “snitch” and “rat”.

Take for example the police brutality case here in NYC of Anthony Baez. After the young Puerto Rican was choked to death by former NYPD officer Francis X. Livoti, former NYPD officer Daisy Boria, refused to go along with the cover up that concocted a story blaming Anthony for his own death in an illegal police chokehold. On the stand, Boria revealed the conspiracy and found herself fearful for her own life. That police conspiracy to lie and cover up was never investigated and the blue wall of silence continues to surround the NYPD. It clearly extends beyond the 5 boroughs, wraps around Shenandoah and parallels the U.S. border with Mexico.

While the officers in Shenandoah did not kill Ramirez with their own hands, the collusion, the working together to protect “boys” they considered “part of their own kind” contributed and continues to contribute to an environment of anti-immigrant/anti-Latino hate. As birthright bills and the case against the killers of a 9 year old Arizona Latina girl with her own dreams not referenced in Obama’s last State of the Union Address carry on, the temperature continues to rise. You do not have hate crimes against Latinos in a vacuum. So long as 287(g) and Secure Communities are the answer the Obama administration gives the community to cries for “immigration reform”, the blue wall of silence will continue to choke, stab, and shoot our own.