Justice for Manuel Espina

LANGLEY PARK, Md.--Maryland law states the police can issue someone a ticket for drinking in public. However, when off-duty police officer Steven Jackson claims he found Manuel de Jesus Espina drinking at a Langley Park apartment on August 16, he beat and pepper-sprayed him, and then shot him dead.

According to the results of an autopsy report arranged by his family, Espina's arms, neck and face were covered with lacerations, bruises and a scratch to his face as a result of the beating.

Officer Jackson, who did not receive medical treatment for injuries that night, claims he shot Espina in self-defense. But police accounts have changed, first claiming Espina grabbed at the officer's gun, then his baton, as eyewitnesses have come forward to describe the tragic events.

Elvia Rivera told the Washington Post that Espina was waiting outside her apartment while she and her mother were preparing a dinner in celebration of his birthday. When her mother told her that a police officer was beating Manuel, she opened the door, and both men entered the apartment.

"He [Jackson] was hitting him very hard," Rivera told the Post. "He was screaming and hitting him. My mother was crying." She described how Espina's eyes were bloodshot, and he was begging the officer to, "Stop, stop." The officer then shot Espina, who fell onto his back, she said. In a separate interview, Rivera's mother Maria Gamez confirmed Rivera's description of events.

Also, according to Rivera, after the shooting, Espina's son, Manuel de Jesus Espina Jacome, entered the apartment and tried to resuscitate his father as the police officer talked on his cell phone. Then, Espina's son was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and resisting arrest.

The autopsy report confirms Rivera's account that Espina likely posed little threat to Jackson, and was beaten to submission prior to being shot.

The incident has sparked outrage among both the Langley Park immigrant community and among civil rights and anti-police brutality activists.

A vigil called by the immigrant and labor rights group CASA de Maryland drew more than 400 community members, as well as representatives from the NAACP, local politicians and Dorothy Elliott, the mother of 1993 police shooting victim Archie Elliott. Speakers denounced the longstanding pattern of police abuse and racism in Prince George's County and demanded justice for Manuel Espina.

As police investigators continue their investigation of the shooting, activists will continue to press for justice. A follow-up vigil was called for September 24 in Langley Park by CASA de Maryland, the DC Alliance for Immigrant Justice, elected officials of the 47th District, the Langley Park Catholic Church, the NAACP, the People's Coalition for Police Accountability and a local network of congregations called PRISCM.

Activists will continue to keep up the pressure, with plans for actions in October and a march on the County Executive possibly in November. The struggle in response to Espina's murder has shown the potential to build grassroots struggle that unites African American and immigrant communities.