BOSTON (WHDH) - The mothers of men killed by Boston police led hundreds of protesters in a rally outside of Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office on Tuesday, demanding that their sons’ cases be reopened as they called for change in the wake of several other deadly police shootings.
Mass Action Against Brutality and the mothers of Burrell Ramsey-White, Usaamah Rahim, and Terrence Coleman joined together to demand that the officers who killed their sons be prosecuted.
Hope Coleman’s son, Terrance, was shot and killed by police in 2016 after she called paramedics to her home.
“If I had known they were going to kill my son, I would have never called 911,” Coleman said through tears.
She called the paramedics so they could take her son, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, to the hospital.
Prosecutors say Terrance Coleman attacked EMTs with a knife but his mother says her son was not armed.
“You cannot use a gun on a mental health patient,” she said. “They have to be more attentive to the situation instead of using a gun.”
Usaamah Rahim’s mother, Rahimah, is calling for an end to qualified immunity for police.
“I am hoping that they will revamp that and throw it out and that each police officer is responsible for what they do and not given qualified immunity,” she said.
Boston police and FBI agents shot and killed Rahimah Rahim’s son in a shopping plaza parking lot in 2015. They say he had ignored repeated orders to drop a 13-inch knife as he approached them.
In 2012, a Boston police officer fatally shot Burrell Ramsey-White, who was allegedly armed with a gun.
Brock Satter, of Mass Action Against Brutality, reiterated, “We demand Rachael Rollins reopen the cases of these three families in particular.”
After the rally, protesters marched down Tremont Street to the South End.
This call for justice follows weeks of demonstrations worldwide for George Floyd.
“Everybody is awake now,” Rahim said. “People seem to have been sleeping and not seeing what was happening to other people.”
Rollins released a statement later in the evening that read in part, “Although the specific investigations that have been raised by the protesters today appear to involve deaths all occurring under prior administrations, I am committed to discussing these cases with DIT. If any new information or evidence is available, I ask that it be directed to my office.”
Rollins took office in 2019 and created the nation’s first Discharge Integrity Team. The four-person team meets with her monthly to review these specific types of cases.
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