Tribute to Timothy Pride
by Charla Greene
November 1994
I would like to make a few comments about "Hell" and it's keepers. On September 30,1994, Timothy Pride, an African American death row inmate, was killed by a guard while on the exercise Yard #1. The OFFICIAL VERSION was that he was fighting with another inmate and did not stop when after warnings were given, so shots were aimed at his feet, and ended up penetrating his back close to his heart. Amazingly poor aim I would say-- if all that were true. The version that comes from the prisoners who witnessed the incident is totally different. No surprise, but guess who gets believed?
The eyewitness accounts say that another man, a white supremacist who had just been released from solitary after being involved in racial fights on another yard, was put on Yard #1. There must have been some indication that there would be trouble, because additional guards were also put there on that day. This man and Pride exchanged two punches, and then stepped away from each other, and that was that until the shot that killed Pride. At the time of the shooting, the two men were around six feet apart, neither had weapons, and no warning was given before the lethal shots were fired. The "official" policy is that a warning whistle must be sounded, then rubber bullets are fired, and then if all else fails to break up the fight, real ammunition is used- the kind that explodes on impact. In Pride's case, no warning whistle was sounded (of course, there wasn't really a fight going on anyway), and the rubber bullets were fired at the same time as the real bullets were aimed at the heart. This illustrates the "unofficial" policy of California prison guards, which is the one actually followed: SHOOT TO KILL!!
There are many reasons why this incident is disturbing and should not go unnoticed and uninvestigated. First, Pride's attorneys had just received results from a DNA test that would put his conviction in question and a new hearing was being scheduled. So it's highly possible that they unofficially executed an innocent man, an all too common practice in this country, especially when that man is black.
Second, California's correctional officers kill three times more prisoners than the nation's seven other major prison systems put together. In an article by Dan Morain, LA Times, he quoted State Department of Justice records showing 33 prisoners (before Pride) were shot from 1983 to 1994, compared with 10 at the other seven prisons combined. Those seven prison, which are in Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and the federal government, hold 391,000 inmates; California's prison population is 125,000. I think we can say there's something seriously wrong here, and it's not going to get better if we are using the prison system as a solution to all of society's problems.!
Third, the systematic killing of inmates amounts to continued genocide against people of color. When so many of the minority youth are thrown in jails, and then set up in fights that give the guards an excuse to shoot, it amounts to "racial cleansing", and the killings are nothing more than extrajudicial executions_ something we campaign against when it happens in other countries but ignore when in happens in our own country!!!
Fourth, Timothy Pride was a human being, with family and friends, not just a piece of dirt that can be brushed away without anyone noticing or caring. One guard, at Pelican Bay another Hell, was quoted as saying " ...an inmate, what's he worth to me?" As if an inmate no longer had a soul or value. How sad and frightening to think it is that mentality that has absolute control over so many lives!
I would like to reprint a Tribute to Timothy Pride from a San Francisco newspaper published for African Americans. I don't know it's name or I would give them credit; however, I hope they know that this is done in respect for a brother felled in the fight for justice:
A MILLION TIMES
A million times we needed you
A million times we cried
If love could have saved you
You never would have died.
In life we loved you dearly
In death we love you still
In our hearts you hold a place
No one could ever fill.
It broke our hearts to lose you
But you didn't go alone
Part of us went with you
The day God took you home.
God saw that you were getting tired
And relief was not to be,
So he put his arms around you
And whispered "Come with me!"
With tearful eye we stayed with you
But saw you fade away
Although we loved you dearly
We could not make you stay.
A golden heart stopped beating
Hard working hands to rest
God broke our heart to prove to us
He only takes the best...
Our dear brother Tim
Tim, how your departure has devastated us.
A man could not ask the omnipotent one,
creator of all things, for a greater loving
brother or comrade than Tim, our love for
you shall eternally reign, impervious and
prodigious, our majestic loved one, we will
see you in the next dimension; until then,
perseverance and solidarity.
-- Your majestical brothers & comrades on the row