ANDRE MAURICE HILL. 47. The second innocent, unarmed black man shot and killed in Columbus, Ohio in the span of three weeks under the hands of the Columbus Police Department. Casey Goodson Jr, another unarmed black man was killed by the CPD three weeks prior. Tuesday morning, the twenty second of December, Officer Adam Coy wrongfully shot and murdered Andre Maurice Hill seconds after their encounter. He was unarmed, simply approaching the garage and holding his cellphone. Both officers who interacted with Hill failed to activate their body cameras until after the encounter which is a violation of the department's protocol. Additionally, the two officers failed to call for emergency medical assistance after the shots were fired, another violation of the protocol. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther stated, “None of the officers initially at the scene provided medical assistance, no compression on the wounds to stop the bleeding, no attempts of CPR, not even a hand on the shoulder or an encouraging word that medics were en route,” the mayor said. “It’s an officer’s duty to render aid.”

17% of black people that are killed by police officers are unarmed. Black people are 1.3x more likely to be unarmed compared to white people. 

Hundreds of innocent people of color in Columbus, Ohio and the rest of the country are being added to the demographic of racial injustice in the police system and nothing is being changed. These police officers have never been held accountable for their crimes and 98.3% of killings by police officers from 2013-2020 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime. Instead their punishments were to be fired from their position. THIS IS NOT ENOUGH. 

ADAM COY, the police officer who shot Andre Maurice Hill, is a 19 year veteran of the force and has had multiple complaints leading up to this. Though Coy has two charges against him of critical misconduct, the charges only applied to his employment status rather than recognizing that this was a criminal, unjust, murder. 

It's time to raise awareness and come together just as we did with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to once again hold the police system accountable for their actions. The Columbus Police Department has done virtually nothing to change their system and to rightfully handle and treat these murders by their own police officers as crimes. 

We demand that:

1. ADAM COY, the murderer of ANDRE MAURICE HILL be terminated from his job immediately.

2. ADAM COY, to be tried for his murder and held accountable. 

3. Mayor Andrew Ginther and the Columbus City Council to publicly condemn the murder of Andre Maurice Hill. 

4. The City of Columbus and Columbus City Council to defund the CPD and instead invest in solutions that root out systemic racism and empower communities.