NEWBURGH – The mother of Omari Shakur, the Newburgh city councilman who went off on police officers when they stopped him for a traffic check, maintains that was the latest effort to get rid of her son.
“Taking into consideration that the powers that be could not stop Omari Shakur from winning his city council seat, they had to come up with another plan to try to stop him and that is what they are trying to do now,” said Lillie Howard.
“What is down at city hall that they do not want Councilman Shakur to stumble upon?” she asked.
Howard questioned through the years, “who are the ones that have benefitted from the monies in the minority business program? How many African Americans were given the chance to open a business through that program? Give some real ‘serious’ though to that.”
And Howard wanted to know, “What other skeletons do they not want revealed?”
Given that February as Block History Month is winding down, Howard questioned how many African Americans are on the city police department; how many are on the city’s employee roster; how many African American businesses are in Newburgh and how many are on Liberty Street; and how many teachers work in Newburgh city schools?
“How many African Americans have been killed by City of Newburgh Police?” Several years ago, one of Shakur’s sons was shot and killed by police during an incident.
The police officers that stopped the SUV that Shakur was driving last week said he had stopped in the middle of Carpenter Street in the afternoon and was talking on a cell phone. When they beeped for him to move and he took no action, an officer approached the vehicle to talk to him, only then to learn who was driving.
They asked for his driver’s license, he refused and became extremely vulgar and verbally combative with the officers who he called “pigs,’ inviting them to arrest him. In the end, they issued him a traffic ticket and he peeled out and drove away.
