teleSUR English | 7/13/2016
When her partner was shot twice in the back by San Jose, Calif. police officers in 2014, Laurie Valdez said that she was denied the video footage, which the force kept under gag order.
“My son had to see his father in a casket sent to Mexico to be buried—there was no place here,” she told teleSUR. Josiah was two years old back then and now acts up in preschool, still traumatized. Based on patterns well-documented among Black children, Valdez sees him falling straight into the school to prison pipeline.
“It’s not a journey (the killing of a loved one) that any family should have to walk alone,” said Valdez, who founded the anti-police brutality group Justice for Josiah to support him and other children suffering from the trauma of losing a parent without cause or consequence.
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Naomi Cohen | journalist 