Group demands removal of image depicting fugitive
National Police Association wants Palo Alto to delete reference to Assata Shakur
PALO ALTO >> A group called the National Police Association is demanding that the city of Palo Alto remove a street mural depicting Black Liberation Army member and fugitive Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison in 1979 after being convicted of killing a police officer in New Jersey.
The group is asking “supporters of law enforcement” to sign an online petition and urge top city officials to remove the “reprehensible” image, which is one of 16 individual murals that side by side spell out Black Lives Matter.
The nearly 245- by 17-foot long Black Lives Matter mural on Hamilton Avenue in downtown Palo Alto is across from City Hall. It features several images inside each letter of the phrase, including a quote from Shakur within the letter “E” of the word Matter — “We must love each to support each other” — and a re-creation of the cover of her autobiography.
Shakur was the first woman placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list after fatally shooting New Jersey State Police Trooper Werner Foerster on May 2, 1973, following a traffic stop of her and two other members of the BLA, according to the FBI.
Police said Shakur shot the officers — killing Foerster and
wounding the other — and got away. She was caught, tried and convicted of firstdegree murder, assault and battery of a police officer, along with other related felony counts and armed robbery. She escaped from prison in a breakout orchestrated by BLA members and fled to Cuba, where she received asylum.
“If it is not possible to imagine putting a 17-foot tall mural of nurse killer Richard Speck in front of a hospital or putting a 17-foot tall mural of Dan White, who assassinated San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, in front of a mayor’s house, the atrocity of the celebration of a fugitive convicted cop killer in front of Palo Alto’s City Hall is equally reprehensible,” the petition said. “For law enforcement required to enter the building is there any description other than a hostile work environment?”
Palo Alto Mayor Adrian Fine said in an interview Wednesday he and other city officials don’t intend to paint over or remove Shakur’s image.
He said we have to honor and respect law enforcement for protecting their communities and that celebrating someone who murdered police officers is not what the city had in mind.
“But let’s be clear, Black lives in America have been punished, beaten and murdered for centuries,” Fine said. “I mean it sucks. This stuff is hard. I will definitely send a mention out to Palo Alto cops saying that I’m sorry this happened. All that said, we have work to do with eliminating racism in local government. I want to be a part of that.”
Palo Alto police Chief Robert Jonsen declined to comment about the controversy.
Police Sgt. Tony Becker, president of the Palo Alto Police Officers Association, said he is considering formally asking the City Council to remove Shakur’s image from the mural.
“It is totally inappropriate to have someone who
killed a police officer memorialized in any kind of public art work,” he said.
The National Police Association is a mysterious group, according to The Baltimore Sun, which found that although created in 2017, it has no discernible ties to law enforcement and doesn’t list staff or board of directors. Its address is a post office box in Indianapolis and its phone number rings to a voicemail box. The association has not replied to this news organization’s requests for comment.
The mural is one of many across the Bay Area and the country that have sprung up on streets amid widespread protests over the police killing of Black people after George Floyd died in Minneapolis on Memorial Day when an officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.
Thursday, Palo Alto police blocked off part of Hamilton Avenue after 36-year-old Matthew Basirico refused to remove his car from atop the letter E until the city comes up with a plan to chemically treat
the letters because they’re already fading.
Oakland resident and muralist Cece Carpio, who painted the Palo Alto mural with her niece, said she is finding herself “defending arts and culture work once again.”
“And as always, this is really about defending the movement and communities I am accountable to and work to uplift,” Carpio said. “As a woman of color, an artist, a muralist and as a cultural worker, I reclaim public spaces and create larger-than-life images to tell stories of our collective experience. I paint to lift up our communities, provoke the power of our imagination and share our stories.”
Seeing the Black Lives Matter movement as a continuation of Shakur’s struggle, Carpio said it was imperative for her to “show solidarity with our Black communities.”
The path for Black liberation Shakur took has paved the way for Black Lives Matter, Carpio said.
At the height of the Cold War, the BLA was among
the chief targets of law enforcement, the FBI and COINTELPRO, a program in the bureau that sought to surveil, infiltrate, discredit and disrupt political organizations and the civil rights and Black Power movements, according to a website dedicated to Shakur’s legacy.
“They see her involvement with the Black liberation movement as a threat to the status quo,” Carpio said. “Just as they see the movement to defend Black
lives as a threat to racial capitalism and white supremacy.”
For Carpio, it was important to bring to light the history of oppression that Black activists have faced in this country, especially from armed police officers who have targeted them for years.
“It’s 2020. Assata is still in political asylum in Cuba. Police are still killing and targeting Black people and Black movements,” Carpio said.