Occupy Media Crash Phony Press Conference with Charles Hynes and Eric Adams
Channel: OccupyTVNY
Date: 03/05/2013

We happened to be on the scene when Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes staged this  bit of political theater for his re-election campaign.  Standing on the steps of Boro Hall, before a small crowd of Black people paid to hold campaign signs and keep their mouths shut, he exchanged campaign promotions with State Senator Eric Adams, who is running for Brooklyn Borough President. We were told this was a press conference, though there was no other media there, just the camera crew apparently working with the campaign. So we set up our camera and asked a few questions about the recent high-profile police killings, including Kimani Gray. The "press conference" was brought to a hasty end, but we continued to ask questions of Hynes, Adams and his aides. A few points of misinformation are corrected on-screen.

Shot by Atiq Zabinski, edited by Raven Rakia and Zabinski.

Kamani Gray was gunned down the night of Saturday, March 9 by two plainclothes police officers who claimed the 16-year-old boy had pointed a gun at them. Eyewitnesses said Kimani was unarmed and that the police continued to fire at him after he had fallen, and then threatened them, the witnesses in turn. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/03/kimani_gray_4.php The two cops had a history of brutality and falsifying evidence http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/cops-killed-kimani-gray-named-federal-lawsuits-article-1.1290342#ixzz2NfWgKBb6 , and their claim of self-defense was made all the more dubious when the coroner revealed that 3 of the 7 fatal bullets came from the rear http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/nyregion/teenager-killed-by-new-york-police-was-shot-7-times.html?_r=1&. Nonetheless, as comments on our previous uploads have made clear, many people's views of this story are colored by the initial reports in the mainstream media, that ran with the cops' version of the event, and publicized the boy's criminal record. 

To help tell the true story of Kimani Gray, including its context of police-community relations in communities like East Flatbush, Occupy TV New York is making a documentary envisioned as a narrative told by many voices, most of them residents of East Flatbush. Anyone wishing to take part in this video may contact atiqzabinski@gmail.com

We will continue to cover the events in East Flatbush and upload them to this playlist. Please bookmark and share this link: http://bit.ly/BrooklynProtest 

OccupyTVNY is a project of the OWS Media Working Group. We mobilize and coordinate volunteer citizen journalism. To get involved, come to our meetings: https://www.facebook.com/events/416424561784187/

This video is licensed under Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ Attribution must be made to OccupyTVNY.com