Who cries for Latonya Perkins?

From 2000

Who cries for Latonya Perkins?

For the last month so-called “leaders” of the black community have gotten major headlines wringing their hands over the President election, the State Senate replacement for Lacy Clay, or internal workings of the local NAACP. In the past under this same black leadership there have been other headline grabbing protests, internal bickering between newspaper publishers, but strangely there is silence in the recent shooting of Latonya Perkins who was found shot to death December 3rd in North St. Louis.

Ms Perkins was the wife of Harold Richardson who is being held in custody for the shooting this past summer of police officer Robert Stanze in August. Many people in North St. Louis felt that there was more to that shooting that meets the eye.

First Mr. Richardson was stopped in connection with the shooting of a Berkley policeman. Although the officers involved in his August 8th arrest were veteran cops, the manner in which the arrest was handled was curious; especially in light of the crime they suspected him of committed.

Secondly even as Mr. Richardson was being arrested for officer Stanze’s shooting, the police continued looking for someone even though they never acknowledged there was another person at the scene. Now his wife gets gunned down barely a block away in what is called an execution style murder that the police say is ‘not related’. Yet the chronology of events leads many to doubt the official story. While the St. Louis police department may not have the negative reputation as say the Las Angeles Police, recent St. Louis Police history is replete with many questionable shootings and incidents. There has been a lot of talk and a lot of smoke, and where there is smoke there is usually fire. Yet there appears to be a conspiracy of silence by the media, the political leadership, and those who fashion themselves as black leaders.

So, who cries, who marches for Latonya Perkins? Was she just as the police and the media suggest, another black homicide victim? Or was it more? Her husband has alleged through his mother that he has been beaten in jail. Who marches for him? What are we missing here? What is being covered up? Perhaps if the black leaders rolled put as much energy in this incident as they do grabbing headlines about elections that in essence had already been decided, the internal bunglings of the NAACP, and the fumbling of the State Senate seat, maybe the real truth can be uncovered. Until then, all we have is more of what the late poet Tupac Shakur, called “Teardrops and closed caskets.”