We Demand Justice for Quanice Hayes
On February 9th, 2017, a child was murdered by the Portland Police Bureau. He was not the first. We live in hope that he will be the last.
Say his name: Quanice Hayes
Say his name: Quanice. He was a son, a brother, a friend. He was a caretaker and an entertainer and a person, loving and beloved. Listen to his family when they tell you who he was. Listen to his friends.
The police and the City want to tell you who Quanice was. That he was a criminal, that he “fit the description.” They cast aspersions against his character in the news but refuse to show his mother the police reports. They refuse to release their autopsy results. If they had evidence to back up their claims, have no doubt we would have seen it by now. If they had fingerprints on a “replica firearm,” if they had dashcam footage that in any way backed up what they want you to believe, it would be public domain.
Again and again we see police departments put the victims of police crime on trial. Police officers almost never go to actual trial for the crimes they perpetrate. In fact, The family of Quanice Hayes has been told by the City of Portland and by the Portland Police Bureau that they should not expect justice. That they should expect to be lied to. That the officers involved will likely not stand trial, or face any sort of punishment for their crimes.
And then when the city comes together to mourn a lost child, a militarized police force is sent against the mourners. Who wears riot gear to a memorial? Who interrupts a mother’s mourning with rubber bullets?
Mothers should not have to sue the city for truth or for justice when their children are murdered. If the city, the police and mechanisms of the state are not there to deliver justice to the people, then we must ask ourselves who they serve? If police are not capable of dispensing justice to one of their own, then they are not for the people.
Give us the truth.
You cannot give Quanice back to his family, but you can give them justice.
Sara Rudolph
