Memorial Portrait Poster of Kendrick Brown, killed by Cleveland police on September 2, 2014
“What happened with Kendrick was this. He had just come back from the South because his mother died and he was so devastated that he was drinking a lot in the early morning of that day. Yeah, he was really wasted and drunk. A woman who knew him said he was a decent guy and so he did shoot his gun into the air a little bit. But, okay, he calmed down–this is from an eyewitness and she knew Kendrick. He calmed down and he was sitting on a log out in front of an apartment building. You sit on the stoop. He didn’t have a gun. And a white shirt cop, Sergeant, from the 4th district drove up. And I think Kendrick might’ve gotten up to talk to the cop. Not sure, but he just blew him away like that. People were pissed off that it was totally unnecessary, totally unnecessary.”–Bill Swain