ITJ Projects

What WE Know About the Killing of Charquisa Johnson

We know that on Saturday, April 25, 2003, around 10:00 p.m., white MPD officer John Fitch entered 2312 Green street SE and took the life of 23-year old Charquisa Johnson, the mother of an infant and toddler. We also know that although Fitch has only been of the MPD three-years, this is his second fatal shooting. We know that Fitch has been on paid leave pending a purported “investigation” by the police, never-mind the notorious fraternal “code of silence,” which is all that we have gotten from the police, the city council, and the U.S. Attorney concerning this fatal shooting. Thus far, the only thing we have seen and heard from the system a willful cover up of overwhelming physical evidence and eyewitness testimony within the community, once again demonstrating the total contempt and disregard for black life and safety held by this society.

Just as the US government demands immunity from being subject to an international judicial system for war crimes and other global criminal activities, the police stationed in our communities are given absolute immunity from prosecution for beating and even killing us. It has now been nearly 4-months since the shooting of Charquisa, yet the US Attorney has never even sought an indictment, because the police have not brought a charge. At the same time in that same period, the number of black youth and adults arrested, charged, jailed, prosecuted, tried, and sent to prison in D.C. probably exceeds a thousand.

The Facts and Lies: A Peoples Investigation
What we know the police claimed to be responding to “a call about a man with a gun” in the area of 15th and V streets SE, which is more than a block from the Galen Terrace complex where Charquisa lived. The police found nothing at 15th and V, when they claimed that they then heard shots coming from the Galen Terrace, yet none of the police accounts ever state how many “shots” they supposedly heard. Police claimed that they “spotted (Charquisa) standing with a gun” as they entered the complex, which consists of two buildings on a L-shaped dead-end parking lot. The police would have had to have x-ray vision to see Charquisa since she was standing in front of her apartment door inside of her building. The police give no detail as to where Charquisa was “standing with a gun in her hand,” she was not in the parking lot, but inside of her building at the very end of the parking lot where she was killed by John Fitch.

Now, according to the police, “officers” confronted Charquisa and demanded that she put down the gun, that not only did she refuse, but that she pointed it at an officer and Fitch then shot her to protect his fellow officer. The police have never identified this other officer who could not defend himself for some reason, nor do they explain how such a confrontation could take place in a narrow stairwell. The police and newspaper accounts state that “Finch had no choice” but to shoot Charquisa to protect the life of the other officer, who would have had to have been standing next to or in front of Fitch. The police claim that Fitch shot Charquisa once in the chest, but according to eyewitness accounts, the shot to the chest was the second shot and came as Charquisa fell backward from the first shot, which struck her in the neck.

COMMUNITY GIVES ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ACCOUNT.

Eyewitnesses say that Charquisa, who had just given birth seven-months before, was in her apartment located on a sublevel of the building. Charquisa’s apartment door is under the first flight of up stairs as you enter the building, so cannot be seen by anyone entering the building. Fitch shot Charquisa in front of her apartment door, in a small hallway, which contradicts the idea of police “confronting” or surrounding her, the space is too small. What we know is that eyewitnesses say that Fitch was already in the area, that he was doing what he did every other night, harassing and trying to intimidate the community. Fitch heard children shooting fire crackers, Charquisa heard them too, because the kids were doing it in the hallway near and within the front door of the building, so she came out to ask them to stop because it was disturbing her baby and two year old son. Charquisa saw some her friends in the hallway and spoke with them when Fitch appeared with his gun drawn and frightened the girls. Charquisa had her back to the entrance, and as she turns around to see what her friends saw, automatically threw up her hands in fright, Fitch shoots her in the neck. Charquisa is sent backward by the shot and begins to collapse, at which point Fitch moves forward down the stairs and fires a second shot that hits her in the chest.

THE FIRST SHOT WAS MANSLAUGHTER, BUT THE SECOND SHOT WAS MURDER!

After shooting Charquisa, Fitch kicked her lifeless body over and came down with his knee in her back with such force that people say they heard her spine snap. Fitch handcuffed the Charquisa and then realized there were eyewitnesses, he began to chase them, bursting into at least one apartment in an effort to intimidate the witness. Other officers arrived shortly after and began to counsel Fitch on how to report the crime as a justified police shooting. A few days later, with a search warrant for Charquisa’s apartment, police claim to have found a weapon, a spent shell casing, and a slug embedded in the wall that appeared to match the found weapon. However, the purported “discovery” does not have even a remote relevance to the case and lacks of credibility. Just as any “discovery” of WMD in Iraq by the Bushwackers would be highly suspect at this point, the police claim of finding a gun other than at the crime scene is highly suspect. If Charquisa was shot for having and pointing the gun, then how was it not recovered from the place where she died? Did the gun grow legs, leave the crime scene, and go into Charquisa’s apartment? Do the police think that the public is so stupid to not only to believe that this young woman who never had anything to do with guns or criminal conduct, possessed an arsenal? No gun was at the scene of the crime. This is just another police murder, another cover-up, plain and simple. Remember Archie Elliot, Prince Jones, Amadou Diallo, and the endless list of innocent people gunned down by police. ITJ calls for a Peoples’ Grand Jury to return a Peoples’ Indictment, to be tried in a Peoples’ Tribunal for the Murder of Charquisa Johnson.

WE THE PEOPLE HAVE RIGHT TO, AND DEMAND JUSTICE!
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!!! NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE