In Brooklyn, Cops 
Gun Down Another Haitian
Once again, officers of the New York Police Department have shot and killed a young Haitian man unjustifiably, according to many witnesses.

Georgy Louisgene, 23, died in a hail of police bullets on Jan. 16 in front of an apartment building at 3501 Foster Avenue as he desperately pleaded with officers to arrest a gang of men who had beaten him bloody with steel bars and golf clubs. Although he carried a carving knife and wooden gaff, his hands were in the air and he was not a threat to the cops who shot him or to anybody else, witnesses told Haïti Progrès. He was pronounced dead at the scene at about 2:30 p.m..

"The cops did not have to shoot him," said Janet McQuillar, in whose third floor apartment Louisgene had taken refuge from the gang minutes before his death. "He did not do anything to deserve to be shot down like a dog."

Some press reports have portrayed Louisgene as deranged. The Jan. 17 Daily News reported that he was "ranting" and exhibiting "bizarre behavior' as he "went through the yard kissing and groping men, women, girls and boys." This picture was drawn largely by the police version and by the men who had taken part in beating Louisgene.

But Louisgene's family rejects the portrayal. "Everything they are saying about his mental condition and all that is false," asserted Georgy's sister, Abellard Louisgene, 25. "He was a very funny, jovial, nice guy. He always wanted to help. He was lovable and appreciated by everybody."

An employee, who asked not to be identified, at the CVS pharmacy at the corner of Utica Ave. and Kings Highway, where Georgy worked stocking shelves, echoed this characterization. "He was a really nice guy who was really cheerful and did his job," the employee said. "We're all shocked."

On that fateful Wednesday, Georgy was in good spirits when he left the Nostrand Avenue home in East Flatbush, where he lived with his parents and four siblings. He was still cheerful when he arrived at work for his noon-to-8 p.m. shift. But around 1 p.m., he made a call in the front of the store to 911, the police emergency number. Although the CVS store managers tried to find out what the problem was, he wouldn't talk to them and left the store in a rush.

"When he called 911 at work, he said, 'I don't want to die at such a young age,'" a police source told the Daily News.

A short time later he was being severely beaten by several men in front of a barren apartment building at 3501 Foster Avenue, on the corner of Brooklyn Avenue. Some residents living in the tough housing project there said they had seen Louisgene in the area before.

To flee the men beating him, Louisgene ran into the apartment building.

"I was watching my soap opera when I heard someone banging on door," Ms. McQuillar told Haïti Progrès. "He was crying, 'Help me, help me.'" Thinking it was a neighbor she knew from upstairs, she opened the door. Louisgene pushed his way in and pleaded with her to close the door and protect him. "Please, please, they are going to come and get me," he told the woman.

At first, Ms. McQuillar was scared because her nephew and his brother-in-law were stabbed to death in a still unsolved double-homicide in Brooklyn's Albany Ave. projects last September. Furthermore, Louisgene was bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth and appeared dazed. She grabbed a stick she keeps for protection."I hit him once with the stick saying 'Get out of my house,'" she said. "He took the stick from me and threw it down. When he did that, I knew I wasn't threatened. I didn't feel in danger."

Then her 14-year-old son came into the front room. Louisgene apparently panicked, grabbed the boy, and the two fell to the floor, wrestling. McQuillar grabbed a wooden-handled hook and a knife. "I said 'Get off of my son,' and started hitting him on the back with the wooden handle," she said. "But it seemed like he didn't even feel it. He was just afraid of me opening that door. I've never seen panic on a man's face like that. It was like there was some kind of monster after him."

Finally in an attempt to calm him, she put down the hook and knife on a table by the door and again asked him to leave. Louisgene ran to the table, grabbed the two items, and went out the door. A few minutes later, the police shots rang out in the courtyard of the building.

"He was gesturing to the cops and trying to tell them -- his jaw may have been broken -- to arrest the men who had beaten him," McQuillar said. Instead, they shot him.

The two officers from the 67^th Precinct were Sgt. James Muirhead, 30, an seven-year veteran, and Officer Joe Thompson, 25, who has been on the force since 1997. The two cops fired eight bullets, five or six of which struck the victim in the chest. The Brooklyn District Attorney's office said there was an on-going investigation into the shooting.

Meanwhile, the family has enlisted the law firm of Feder & Rodney to carry out an investigation. "We have a lot of leads, but we haven't confirmed anything yet," said partner Vladimir Rodney. "But we will say that there is certainly more to this case than meets the eye, more than has been reported. Everything is being pursued."

The official police report claims that "officers ordered the male several times to drop this weapon [the knife or hook]. Witnesses state that the male then moved toward the officers at which time the officers fired striking the perp[etrator]." What crime Louisgene was guilty of "perpetrating" is not made clear in the report.

But three eye-witnesses contradicted the police version. They told the Daily News that the police only said "Drop it" once before firing. 

"The cops were down [the path leading to the courtyard in front of the building], and he was up," said one witness who did not want to be identified. "He was no threat to them. He was not a threat to anybody. Nobody was around him. They just went and shot, shot, shot."

"They could have just shot him in the leg or arm," Ms. McQuillar said. "That boy did not deserve to die in the streets like that."

Georgy, who was going to claim U.S. citizenship on Jan. 18, was born in Carrefour in Port-au-Prince. He moved to Brooklyn in 1993 with his parents, Georges, 49, and Marie Andresia, 47, his three sisters, Abellard, Cindy, 20, and Soledad, 18, and his brother, Junior, 21. He attended Tilden High School and was planning to attend a technical training institute.

He was also an aspiring musician, who played "mizik angagé" with various groups in local clubs.

Ironically, Georgy marched, with his entire family, in demonstrations protesting the killing of Patrick Dorismond, a 26-year-old Haitian-American who was gunned down by New York City cops on March 16, 2000 (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 18, No. 1, 3/22/2000). That killing took place following the torture of Abner Louima in 1997 and the shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, among many other cases of police brutality. "I want to ask the entire community to help us in this struggle to find justice," said Abellard Louisgene in a Jan. 22 interview on Radio Lakay. "We must put a stop to these killings."

(The Louisgene family reports that funeral arrangements have not yet been fixed but will be announced shortly).