By BRIAN CRAWFORD
On Oct. 3, Robert Jones, a 54-year-old professional roadside assistance operator, approached a car stopped in the turn lane. In the car was Christopher Sweeney, an off-duty Philadelphia homicide detective. Jones was wearing his high visibility vest when he approached, and there is no indication that there were any words exchanged between the two men. When Jones got near the vehicle, Sweeney fired several shots through his driver’s side window, hitting Jones and killing him.
Initial reports of the incident described it as an attempted “carjacking”—even though Jones was unarmed and had his own car parked nearby.
The Philadelphia Police Department has neither fired nor charged Sweeney. Currently, he is on administrative leave pending an investigation. This fact, as well as the characterization of Jones as a carjacker in early news reports angers his family. They are demanding that Sweeny be fired and charged with murder.
On Nov. 2, the Jones family and activists protested in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall and marched to police headquarters. One protest organizer told the crowd: “He was executed for the crime of being Black. Sweeney is walking free. This instance of police murder, like Mark Dial’s assassination of Eddie Irizarry [shot by Officer Dial while in his car in August 2023], serves to terrorize Black and Brown communities in Philadelphia, who cannot expect to be safe in their own neighborhoods. This case highlights a clear need to rekindle the fight for community control of police in Philadelphia.”
Meanwhile, like countless others whose family members or friends are murdered with impunity by police, Jones’s family and friends demand justice. His aunt told the rally, “We are asking for the officer to be taken off the force and the streets, to lose his job, and to be jailed.”
“He [Sweeney] is a killer,” said Nicole High, a friend of Robert Jones. “He should not ever, ever be allowed to carry a gun [or] call himself a police officer—on duty or off duty. He killed an unarmed Black man. Everyday the story changes. Tell the truth! You [Sweeney] were scared of a Black man! Tell the truth!”
Drexel University’s Urban Health Collaborative conducted a study that found that of the 39 people killed by police in Philadelphia in the years 2013-2020, 26 were Black. Of the homicides committed by police, 82% occurred in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods. In cases of non-fatal shootings, 81% occurred in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. African Americans were nine times as likely to be killed by police as whites.
“Those familiar with the city and its history say there is a well documented history of racial discrimination and police brutality wrought against Black residents,” wrote Josiah Bates for Time magazine in 2020.
The problem is hardly a new one. W.E.B Dubois, in his book “The Philadelphia Negro,” found that in the late 1800s, though Blacks were 5% of the population in the city, they made up a third of the population in the jails. In the years 1950-1960, 90% of people killed by police were Black. Later, in the ’60s, Frank Rizzo became police chief and was dedicated to keeping the Black population “in its place.” Rizzo became mayor in the 1970s, and at the end of the decade, the Department of Justice sued Rizzo and the police department for employing brutality and forced confessions, and “using deadly force where it was unnecessary.”
Philadelphians protested against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, as did millions in cities across the country. But as in other cities, their demands to reallocate funds to communities and control of policing went unanswered. The city’s current mayor, Cheryl Parker, stresses that she is committed to “law and order.” The Philadelphia police budget is over $741,000.
Of course, the brutal, murderous legacy of policing is not exclusively owned by Philadelphia; it is shared by police departments across the Unite States. Last year (2023), there were over 1100 people killed by the police nationwide. African Americans are felled by law enforcement at higher rates than with any other group. This means that the struggle against racist state violence must be massive and national in scope.
Simon Mincenich, of the Philadelphia Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, one of the groups that organized the Nov. 2 event for Robert Jones, emphasized that in order to win against the system, “We will have to organize and fight!” He concluded, “We need to organize ourselves into a new way of life based in community control, democracy for the people that really make up society.”
Photo: Nov. 2 rally in Philadelphia. (John Kirkland / Workers’ Voice)