XPost: la.general, alt.politics.media, alt.business
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Ed Buck, a Los Angeles man accused of forcibly injecting black
gay men with fatal doses of drugs, targeted his victims for
years without facing consequences, authorities have said.

For the mother of one victim, it was clear how he got away with
his crimes: LA law enforcement ignored evidence, rejected the
stories of the black gay men who tried to speak up, and turned
away families fighting for justice.

“I’m a grieving mother, but they treated us like criminals,”
LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, told the Guardian on
Wednesday. “I haven’t been able to recover.”

Buck, a 65-year-old political activist and Democratic donor, was
arrested last week, with prosecutors saying he was a “violent
sexual predator” who ran a drug den and had at least 11 victims.
Authorities said he injected men with deadly doses of
methamphetamine, including Moore, 26, who overdosed inside
Buck’s West Hollywood apartment in July 2017.

If the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) and the LA county
district attorney, Jackie Lacey, had taken Moore’s death
seriously, and arrested and prosecuted him two years ago, Buck
would not have been able to harm so many additional people,
Nixon said.

“I didn’t ask for nothing special. I just wanted [Lacey] to do
her job,” said Nixon, who lives in Texas and was in LA this
week, meeting with black LGBT activists and lawyers who have
investigated Buck for years and pushed for charges. “We had our
proof. We gave her all of the evidence. I don’t know if she
ignored it because it was black gay men, or because it was gay
men, period. I got the runaround.”

Buck allegedly went after men who were struggling with
homelessness and drug addiction, offering to pay them for sex
and seeking to inject them. One victim told police he was known
locally as “Doctor Kevorkian”.

Buck is accused of giving some men tranquilizers without their
knowledge and drugging them while they were unconscious. Some
said they woke up to discover they had been sexually assaulted.
One victim said Buck threatened him with a power saw.

Timothy Dean, a second fatality, died of an overdose in Buck’s
home in January 2019.

The arrest last week came after a third victim, a 37-year-old
man identified as Joe Doe, overdosed non-fatally inside his West
Hollywood home this month. In that case, Buck refused to render
aid and thwarted the victim’s attempts to get help, forcing him
to flee and call 911, police said.

The LA district attorney charged Buck with drug felonies related
to that overdose, but the DA filed no charges in the deaths of
Moore and Dean. In Moore’s case, federal prosecutors charged
Buck with administering meth to a victim who died. Activists
have advocated for murder charges.

“I wanted everybody to know what this man did to my child, so he
couldn’t hurt anyone else’s kid or family member. I had to say
something,” Nixon said, recounting her decision to speak
publicly after her son’s death. “Timothy Dean’s death could’ve
been prevented if they had listened to us. But they didn’t.”

‘They were not taken seriously’
Nixon said Moore was a jokester who loved to cook for others,
especially chicken parmesan: “Gemmel had a lot of aspirations …
He was adventurous. He was loving. He was caring. He was
nurturing. He spoke his mind.”

She said her son told her about Buck in 2016, telling her “he
was held in this man’s house for a few days and that he shot him
up with something and he didn’t know what it was”. She urged him
to report him to police, and he told her police wouldn’t help.

Jasmyne Cannick, an activist who has led the effort to get Buck
arrested and conducted her own investigations into him, said
that multiple victims tried to report Buck to the sheriff’s
office and were “turned away”, adding: “Numerous other Joe Does
were not taken seriously.”

“Because they were black gay men, the county didn’t care to
listen to their stories. The county didn’t care to follow up,”
said Hussain Turk, an attorney for Moore’s family.

The most recent overdose victim told reporters this week that he
was homeless and trying to get his life back together. Advocates
have been raising funds for him and other survivors and victims’
families and have argued that local authorities should be
providing support to the victims and witnesses.

Nixon said there were numerous times officials mistreated her in
the wake of her son’s death. The coroner’s office sent her a
$300 bill for the cost of removing her son’s body from his home,
she said: “Send it to Ed Buck. He killed my son. Why are you
sending me the bill?”

She said the coroner also publicly released a report that failed
to redact her home address, forcing her to move from her home:
“I didn’t feel safe.” The DA’s office also turned her away when
she showed up in person, she said.

A coroner’s office spokeswoman confirmed it bills for
“transportation” and said the address was “public record”. A
spokesman for Lacey said the DA’s office “is legally and
ethically required and committed to only bring charges that have
sufficient, admissible evidence” and that there was
“insufficient evidence” to pursue homicide charges.

Buck’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries.

‘I need to see this through, then I can mourn’
Advocates gathered with Nixon at a West Hollywood auditorium on
Wednesday and said the fight for justice was far from over.

Jerome Kitchen, a local activist, said people needed to stand up
for the black LGBT community in LA: “There are a lot of Ed Bucks
out here right in this community. They prey on us.”

He added: “White men have been given a free pass in society to
do as they want … and inflict pain and hurt on minority
communities. We are fighting back against that.”

Turk, the local attorney, said the problem of meth in the gay
community had become a “public health epidemic” that was
disproportionately affecting LGBT people of color.

Nixon said there were black gay men who thought “no one cares
about them” and she wanted them to know there were people who
were there for them: “You can never know the extent a mother
would go for her child.”

She said she hadn’t had an opportunity to properly grieve for
her son’s loss with the continuing fight to hold Buck
accountable.

“I’m numb, to be honest. I just picture him here in California.
I haven’t processed the fact that he’s dead. I need to see this
through and then I can mourn,” Nixon said, adding: “When all the
cameras go away, I have to deal with the fact that my child is
not here. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. All I have left
is memories. I’m dying on the inside. A piece of me died.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/25/police-enabled- predator-ed-buck-by-ignoring-black-gay-men-victims-mother-says

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