In Sunflower County, Mississippi, last week, a grand jury decided not to levy criminal charges against a police officer who shot an unarmed, unthreatening 11-year-old boy in the chest last May. 

Responding to a call of a possible domestic disturbance, two police officers of Indianola, Mississippi, arrived at the home of Nakala Murry. Murry had instructed her young son, Aderrien Murry, to call the police after the father of one of her younger children came to the home “irate” and threatening Nakala. By the time officers arrived, the man was already gone but officers demanded residents vacate the house. 

It was then that an officer later identified as Sgt. Greg Capers opened fire on Aderrien, wounding him in the chest.

Nakala reported hearing one gunshot as she left the house to address the officers. Aderrien had approached officers from around a corner inside the home and was shot on sight by Capers.

Capers was initially placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. In the seven months since the incident, Murry, her attorney Carlos Moore, and their supporters in Mississippi have called for Capers to be fired from his position as a police officer and to face criminal charges for the shooting of Aderrien who suffered broken ribs, a lacerated liver and a collapsed lung from the attack. Capers has been on paid and unpaid administrative leaves since the incident.

Murry, following the decision of the grand jury, is demanding that body-cam footage be released to the public showing the attack on her son. The footage itself—which is public property—was for many months locked away by the police department until Murry and a few select others from her legal team were allowed to view it under strict confidentiality conditions. 

Since viewing it, Murry and her legal team are demanding it be released as part of their ongoing effort to seek justice for her son Aderrien. 

“Watching that footage was nothing I was prepared for emotionally, but it was something I had to do,” she said. “I feel disgusted, outraged and emotionally damaged, but in all of those feelings I feel blessed. This has been a process of fighting for justice for my son.”

The family’s attorney told reporters at the recent press conference following the decision of the grand jury that they will not let this decision halt them in their efforts. “While the grand jury has spoken, we firmly believe that there are unanswered questions and that the shooting of Aderrien Murry was not justified,” Moore said in a statement. “We are committed to seeking justice for Aderrien and his family, and we will persist in our efforts to ensure accountability through the civil legal process.”

The city of Indianola and the police department have fought legal proceedings to have the footage released under concerns of privacy for the young victim and the officer even as their names are already public knowledge. Capers and his lawyers are currently petitioning the city to put him back into active duty with the police force.

Moore told Business Insider that he believes the release of the body-cam footage would spark a very justifiable public outcry and this is the only reason the police refuse to make it public. “We know that if it’s in their favor, the [sic] immediately release body camera footage,” Moore said. “So we believe that it is worse than we can imagine.” Moore intends to file a federal lawsuit for the release of the footage. 

Aderrien has suffered a long and difficult recovery and has since gone into counseling treatments to address the psychological trauma of Capers’ attack. Moore has said that the child still has trouble breathing and has struggled to understand why the officer shot him that day.

“He told his mom not to worry. It was not her fault,” Moore told Business Insider. “She was blaming herself, and he’s trying to encourage her not to blame herself. He told us, ‘It’s the cop’s fault—it’s not your fault.’ He was doing all he could to help protect his mom, and he ends up getting shot.”

As the year 2023 draws to close, Mapping Police Violence records that police have killed 1,141 people across the United States. More than 600 of those have been killed since Aderrien was shot in May. 

According to the Democratic Party and their auxiliary organizations such as Black Lives Matter, this social plague is a result of police officer racism. As such, little has been said by these groups on this case, as the officers involved and the victim are all African Americans. 

The reality is that the police are the armed functionaries of the capitalist state tasked with enforcing social inequality and the class system through violence and repression. Just this week, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together in wide bipartisan support for a massive increase in the Pentagon budget, totaling $883.7 billion.

This spending bill will see nearly unlimited resources to fund increasingly militarized police forces at home as well as war and genocide abroad. This will inevitably deepen the chasm of social inequality and fan the flames of working class struggle against police violence and its the root cause, the capitalist system.