Send Him Back to Jail!

On April 9, a Bronx judge handed NYPD sergeant Erik Duran a three-to-nine-year prison sentence for killing Eric Duprey in August 2023. Duran was taken directly from the courtroom to the notorious Rikers Island jail. “He deserved the maximum,” Duprey’s partner Orlyanis “Pearl” Velez said. She also observed in response to the killer cop’s sentencing: “He’s in jail. I’m happy. I can sleep now.” A week later, on April 17, an appeals court judge shattered that happiness by setting Duran free on bail while he challenges his conviction. This is an outrage! Duran should rot in jail!

Duran killed Eric Duprey, a 30-year-old Puerto Rican, by throwing an ice chest at his head. And then Duran lied about it. First, he claimed it was all just a scooter “accident.” When closed-circuit video showed him hurling the cooler at Duprey, Duran lied again, claiming he was defending other cops and children because Duprey was going to run them over. The conviction and sentencing of this lying cop made national news because it is so rare. He is the first NYPD officer convicted in ten years for killing someone while on duty, and the first in decades to be sentenced to jail time. The last cop convicted, for killing Akai Gurley in 2014, got off on probation. Put “cooler killer” cop Duran back behind bars where he belongs!

This will require more sustained protest. It took a series of united-front courthouse protests initiated by Black Lives Matter Greater NY and the Open Police Archives Committee NYC to get Duran tried, convicted and sentenced to jail in the first place. From the outset, the cops countermobilized to back Duran and intimidate the Duprey family. Dozens of cops filled the courtroom at early hearings, while the Duprey family and their allies had just one row of seats. But by the sentencing, the family’s supporters claimed a majority of the seats and overflowed into the hall.

Afterwards, Duran’s lawyers said they went for a trial by a judge without a jury because “you don’t trust a Bronx jury with a cop’s fate.” The cops know damn well that Duran getting found guilty and sent to jail was a victory for working-class, black and brown New York. The forces of “law and order” immediately went on the offensive. The police “unions,” the New York Post and other reactionary outfits are inciting a backlash to secure the reversal of the conviction and sentence. Their message is that Duran was just “doing his job,” i.e., keeping the ghettos and barrios down. The owners of the New York Islanders hockey team ran a jumbotron ad during the team’s season finale to raise money for Duran’s legal fees.

The case has also become an issue in statewide politics. A bunch of Republican state reps signed a letter urging Democratic governor Kathy Hochul to pardon Duran, and one Republican candidate for governor is promising to do that “on day one” if elected. In response, Hochul invited Duran to file a pardon application!

In contrast to Duran, Guy Rivera, a defendant acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter in the 2024 shooting of a cop in Queens, was sentenced on April 27 to 115 years in prison! The fact that Duran is already back on the street underscores that we cannot win justice for victims of racist cop terror and their families by relying on prosecutors, courts, review boards or Democratic Party politicians. Take “socialist” mayor Zohran Mamdani. He kept hated police commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose crimes included refusing to fire the cop who killed Allan Feliz in the Bronx, even after an NYPD disciplinary proceeding recommended it. Within weeks of taking office, Mamdani thanked the cops who shot 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty in Queens. Just in the last two weeks, his cops brutalized and arrested anti-ICE protesters and defended grotesque Zionist “sales” of West Bank Palestinian-owned land. Predictably, Zohran has not uttered a word about jailing Duran.

The road forward in the fight against racist cop terror is to unite the broadest forces who stand on the side of the cops’ victims—crucially including the multiracial working class. At the courthouse protests for the Duprey family, the presence of trade unionists, often in their union jackets, was crucial. This included transit, healthcare, education, hospitality and longshore union members. We salute Allan Feliz’s brother Samy and everyone who came out for the April 9 sentencing—including Parents Supporting Parents NY, Hospital Workers Building Union Power, NY Young Communist League, Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, JUPI BX, Freedom Socialist Party and the Maoist Communist Union. We will keep mobilizing to get justice for Eric Duprey and the many other victims of the NYPD.