On the heels of the killing of Chicago-area security guard
Jemel Roberson at the hands of police, comes the shockingly similar story of how
Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr's young life also came to an end. During the Thanksgiving holiday, the Riverchase Galleria Mall near Birmingham, Alabama was struck with a barrage of gunfire. As bullets flew, hundreds of shoppers ran for cover. One of them was Bradford Jr. — a 21-year-old man.
Unlike the other shoppers who made it to safety,
Emantic — EJ to his friends —
never made it out alive. How did this happen? Why? It's not too hard, to put the pieces together.
EJ, who is black, was a legally licensed gun carrier, but when the police stormed the mall to find the shooter, they saw EJ with a gun and automatically thought he was guilty. Police originally claimed he was the gunman, but after defaming his name for an entire weekend they finally admitted that he wasn't, and in fact,
the actual shooter is still at large.
The family's lawyer — civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump Jr — puts its simply, saying that
the officer who killed EJ "saw a young black man with a gun and he shot him." This is just another example of racial profiling. Another example of how the 2nd amendment is used as a shield for some and a death sentence for others, and a tragic story of how
yet another innocent black man has died at the hands of law enforcement. Emantic deserves justice. The Hoover Police Department and the officer should be held accountable for what they did to Mr. Bradford Jr. and the heartbreak they have brought to his family.
But we cannot leave it up to the police department to investigate itself. Emantic deserves real justice and that requires independent and transparent investigation into his death.
Sign the petition and tell the Hoover Police Department and Alabama's Attorney General Steve Marshall that you want #JusticeforEmantic.