A DREAM DESTROYED - THE POLICE MURDER OF ERIC SMITH It was hard to miss Wanda Hogue in the crowd of people in Chicago's Daley plaza on October 22nd. She had come with her two daughters to participate in the National Day of Protest against Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Above her she held a poster with the bruised and battered face of a young black man. Underneath were the words, "Remember Eric Smith. Stop Police Brutality." This was her son. Twice a victim of police violence. They first took his spirit, and then his life. What follows is his story. "It's just a crime to be a Black man now." - Wanda Hogue, mother of Eric Smith Sensitive. Compassionate. Eric Smith was known as a "gentle giant." With a six-foot two-hundred seventy pound frame - he could have easily become the neighborhood bully in the Joliet community he grew up in. Instead, he saved his fights for the wrestling mats in school. Illinois State champ in elementary school. Gold medal at the '93 World Games for the deaf in Bulgaria. Outside of the ring, he was in his mom's words, "a big softie." 1995 was a time of transition in his life. At 21 years-old, he was a promising second year student at Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., a well known school for the deaf and hearing impaired. He was already thinking about what came next. Teaching? Coaching? Social work? He didn't know, and he never got the chance to find out. One night in October, he walked outside his apartment and hailed a patrol car. He had endured a week of break-ins, and no matter how many times he called the police on his special phone for the hearing impaired, not a single cop showed up to even make a report. Frustrated, Eric decided that if the police wouldn't come to him, he'd go to them. As Eric stood near the police and wrote down the information for them, a car pulled up. Gunfire followed, and one of the police officers collapsed to the ground, shot and killed by someone described as a reputed drug addict. Another cop returned fired and killed the shooter. Eric, meanwhile, had run for cover. Backup arrived and nine cops approached a much relieved Eric. He never even saw it coming. They maced him. They beat him with clubs and large flashlights. They broke his wrist and put a gash in his head that required six stitches to close. They left one of his eyes swollen shut. It was a clear case of "guilty for being Black." According to his mother, had he been a smaller man, he would have died right there in the street. No cop ever saw a day in jail for this assault. The D.C. police department evidently thought that a written apology for a case of mistaken identity would be sufficient. For Eric, the beating was a harsh lesson. "You always taught me police were my friends" he said to his mother, Wanda Hogue, "look what they did to me." It left Eric profoundly changed. "He was beaten up not just physically but spiritually," observed Marilyn Figgins, family friend and mother of Eric's girlfriend. Since the beating, he dropped out of school. He became depressed. At times paranoid. Often spiritless. He would get angry over trivial things. Hoping it would help, his family took him for counseling in Chicago. It was on the way home from one of those visits, that Eric received his final helping of police procedure. "He was a frightened young man, he was desperately trying to sign, desperately trying to communicate with these officers, who were thoroughly unreceptive. It got out of control from the very beginning...... death under these circumstances is intolerable." - Walter Jones, Jr., one of the attorney's for Eric's family "I was an eyewitness. He was not aggressive in anyway. There was no reason for guns. There was no reason anytime for brutality, period." - Wanda Hogue in press interview It was Tuesday, April 9, 1996, in the middle of the evening rush hour. Wanda was driving Eric and his grandmother, Lillie Pruitt, south on Interstate 55, the Stevenson Expressway. He had just finished a session with his counselor, and was heading back to his grandparents home in Joliet. The problem was that he didn't want to go. Eric was agitated because he felt that he needed more time with his counselor. Since it was hard to communicate with her back turned toward her son, Wanda decided to pull the car off the road. She also hoped that he would cool off. He didn't. Eric was determined. If his mom wasn't going to turn the car around, then he'd drive. Wanda tossed the keys out the car window. Eric crossed into traffic to get the keys, and was struck and grazed by a slow moving car. As he began to head back to his mom's car, he discovered that he now had company. Walking Eric off the roadway were two white cops who had come on the scene only moments earlier. Pete Bernal, 31 and Robert Lawruk, 53, were from the nearby and nearly all-white suburban Chicago town of Forest View - population 743. The town's eighteen member police force was so small that not even half the cops were full time. Lawruk was one of those part-timers. Neither he or Bernal evidently had any training in dealing with people with hearing disabilities. It mean that the police had no way of easily communicating with Eric, had they even wanted to make the attempt. It's at this point that the stories diverge into two conflicting tales. One version was presented in a report by a task force comprised of different state and county police agencies. The report paints an image of an out-of-control, dangerously violent, young man - who had to be stopped by any means necessary. Since the police can't deny that Eric was repeatedly beaten and shot, they simply justify it. In this version, Lawruk is flagged down by Eric's grandmother, sees Eric striking his mother in the car and calls for assistance. Bernal then arrives in time to see Eric bolt from the car, get hit, and then "charge" in their direction. Both cops then grab Eric and move him to the side of the road, at which point, they claim, the young man simply "exploded." In the police version of events, Eric suddenly punches Bernal in the eye and the nose. Eric grabs for a cop's holstered gun, grabs Bernal by the throat, and tosses Bernal and Lawruk to the ground. Beatings don't seem to stop Eric. Bullets don't seem to slow him down. As portrayed by the police, he's a virtual superman. The police claim that the struggle ends after Eric either pulls or knocks his grandmother down and then makes yet another lunge at Lawruk, who fires his gun one more time. Eric finally collapses, dead by the time he reaches the hospital. In the words of the Forest View police chief, Glen David, the actions of the police demonstrated "An appropriate escalation of force." In the eyes of Wanda Hogue, her son was killed in "cold blood." The police version of events was simply attempt to "turn the victim into the villain." On October 4th, she and Eric's grandmother filed a complaint against the Village, Police department and Police Chief of Forest View, and all cops directly involved in the events surrounding Eric's death. As a consequence, family members can not fully discuss the details of Eric's shooting. However, based on past comments made by family members to the press and details presented in the lawsuit - a picture emerges of what happened to Eric Smith at the hands of the police. It was a recipe for stereotyping. Two white cops with no training in sign language see a large Black man waving his hands. What the cops insisted was Eric striking his mother was in reality an agitated Eric signing with his hands as he argued with his mother. The cops biased conclusions ensured that their only communication with Eric would be with a metal baton and a gun barrel. According to Eric's family, the threat of violence was introduced by the police. Bernal already was holding a gun to the back of Eric's head as the police walked Eric to the shoulder of the highway. According to Lillie Pruitt, "The police grabbed him and brought him out onto the grass and told him to get down and he wouldn't get down." The cops also reportedly called Eric a "son- of-a-b*tch." Eric was terrified according to Wanda. He was still carrying the psychological scars from the time he was battered by the Washington police. The last thing he could bear was another beating. Yet that's just what he was about to get. While Bernal continued to wave and point his gun at Eric, Lawruk clubbed Eric in the head and shoulders. As Wanda observed, it was Rodney King all over again. The women screamed at the police that Eric was deaf. Seeing the guns pointed at Eric, Wanda cried for the cops to use mace instead. Lillie pleaded as well, "Don't hurt my baby. Don't shoot my baby. He can't hear you, he's deaf." Their words had no effect. Both women watched as police continued to beat Eric. They watched as Bernal shot Eric in the stomach. They watched as Lawruk shot Eric in the back. Lillie rushed over to her grandson as he lay bleeding on the ground. Once more, Eric attempted to get on his feet. He grabbed onto his grandmother, tried to rise - and both tumbled to the ground. All Lillie could do then was gently cradle her grandson's head in her hands. By that time, Eric was anything but a threat to the police. His body had taken five bullets - most of them hollow point bullets, designed to do serious internal damage. His insides were torn up and bleeding. His bones were broken. Yet the cops weren't finished with him. Perhaps he jerked or slightly moved. That was enough excuse for Lawruk's trigger finger. "He was lying there right on the ground and he just shot him, right there in the stomach and finished him off," said Wanda. "There was no reason to pump that last shot into him." Before leaving the scene, police had one final indignity left to commit. They handcuffed Eric's mother and grandmother and took them both to the Forest View police station. For the next several hours they were kept prisoners. They were not informed that they were under arrest, nor allowed to call a family member or a lawyer. Wanda, cuffed to a wall, was told she couldn't leave until giving a statement. Lillie, a diabetic and recovering from a stroke, was kept locked in a room. She was forced to use a garbage can to relieve herself. In a unintentionally revealing admission, the Police Chief David simply stated that this was "procedural." "Money doesn't mean anything to me. I can't get my baby back. I just want the truth known." - Eric's grandmother Lillie on filing the twenty-count lawsuit over Eric's death. "He was distraught. People are distraught every day in minor incidents across the city. They don't get shot six times" - Walter Jones, Jr., one of the attorneys for Eric's family The lawsuit against the Village of Forest View, et al, has twenty counts - including civil rights violations and violations of the American with Disabilities Act. The suit also charges that "an atmosphere of lawlessness" was created within the police department, that allowed the use of illegal and excessive force - including deadly force - by its cops. Among the lawsuit's demands is that neither Lawruck or Bernal can hold a job with the Forest View village or Police Department where they would carry any kind of weapon. The filing of the lawsuit will also enable the family's lawyers to get access to additional information around Eric's death. This information includes the witnesses who were cited in the task force report as bolstering the police version of events and a medical report alleging a minuscule amount of PCP in Eric's urine. Until now, the authorities have denied the lawyers access to this information, making it impossible for them to even verify if this information is at all accurate. For Wanda, the suit is one step to take for justice. She wants to expose the crime done to her son for all to see, and undo what calls the public "brainwashing" done by police accounts. Because, she feels, what happened to Eric shouldn't happen to anyone. "This was not destiny," Wanda commented, "this was not the fate of my son. This is a pattern of brutality against black men," adding, "God used him like Martin Luther King. He uses good people to show police brutality. No justice, no peace - I believe that."