R.I.P. Francisco Moran: Murdered by Modesto Police

Francisco Moran, a 45 year old man was shot and killed by police in North East Modesto on early Monday morning, as officers responded to a civil dispute at his home. In the newspaper on Tuesday, police claimed that Moran was "belligerent" and "intoxicated," and after being tasered, came at police with a knife that was taken from his pants. This forced them to shoot Moran dead. Seems like we've heard this story before haven't we?

In 2003, police shot and killed Eustolio Aguilar, after they claimed he was reaching for a gun. After he was dead, it turned out he was reaching for a cell phone. In 2004, police shot and killed Sammy Galvan, also after responding to a domestic dispute in which they stated that Sammy tried to throw a knife at them. Later, witnesses and family claimed that Sammy only had a can opener. In 2006, police shot Melron Johnson, again claiming that he was armed with a knife. Later, it was revealed that Johnson in fact had no knife at all when he was shot. Also in 2006, police shot out the windows of a deaf driver's car during a stop, and then tasered the man. All the while he screams over and over again, "I'm deaf! I'm deaf!" In 2007, Ceres police shot a man fleeing arrest in the back, and according to them he was "reaching for a gun." Upon his arrest, it is found that he is in fact, was unarmed.


And so, it came as no surprise today, when the Modesto Bee's front headline read that Fransisco Moran was brandishing a spatchula in fact, and not a knife. Is it any shock at all that police would lie through their teeth about the initial encounter with Moran? Now they claim that they "thought" that the spatchula was a knife, and thus had to kill Moran in order to save their lives. This, is, literally "hog wash." The police systematically kill and assault people in this city and across the country, then cover up the facts later, using the media to demonize their victims. Now, on paid leave for murdering another working person in another Modesto neighborhood, it's up to us to stand up to the police and the violence they represent.

Modesto Police Chief Mike Harden, was quick to call the officers involved in the shooting "victims," because they had to live through murdering someone. But it was the police themselves that signed up to do that very job. And it was the police who pulled the trigger on a man in front of his family, killing him in cold blood just because he was in the middle of an argument and had a kitchen utensil.


As we speak, people in LA are in the middle of an uprising, attacking police and their stations, after police killed a 37 year old Guatemalan man, Manuel Jamines. In Oakland, the city has been rocked with massive riots in the wake of the BART police's murder of Oscar Grant. Today, people involved in Modesto Copwatch and other community based groups went around speaking to people in the neighborhood where Francisco was killed. "What they did to him was wrong. Everyone gets in arguments. But they didn't have to kill him," stated one local resident. Perhaps the spatchula is in fact a fine symbol for this moment. Because in this kitchen, all chickens come home to roost.