Editor:

The Cultural Studies Student Organization sent the following letter to the Claremont Mayor Karen Rosenthal, City Manager Glen Soudhard, and Police Chief Robert Moody. We submit this also as a letter to the editor:

We are writing as graduate students of the Claremont Graduate University to insist that further investigation be conducted into the January 1999 shooting of Irvin Landrum, Jr. An integral part of the cultural studies project is to create a classroom environment and academic approach capable of meeting the demands of an increasingly diverse and global society. We understand that for this project to be realized, we must reach out from the "ivory tower" to become involved in the local community. For both of these reasons, the shooting of Irvin Landrum, Jr. is important to us.

As cross-disciplinary students interested in the interrelatedness of culture, we are aware of the relationship between education and the expanding prison industrial complex. Thus we recognize the parallel ties of decreased funding for education, arts and the humanities and the increased in state expenditure sorry to incarcerate our lost students. We are able to see the affiliations between racial profiling, the disproportionate numbers of black and brown men in prison, the rising numbers of women incarcerated , the 114 juveniles on death row, the supposed "war on drugs," the private corporations lobbing to build more facilities in the small-town communities lured by these private corporations with promises of jobs, which have all merged to create the highest rate of incarceration on the planet, figures rapidly exceeding one million.

We would like to hope that our local Claremont Police Department also recognizes this systematic convergence of private corporate interests, racism, and criminal justice and makes it a primary objective to fight social injustice to create a more democratic society. Unfortunately the reluctance on the part of the Claremont Police Department to take action and investigate the incidents surrounding the shooting of Irvin Landrum, Jr. suggests otherwise. As students and future teachers, citizens and professionals, We support the Claremont Police Depart, but encourage that it take a proactive rather than reactive stance toward these events. We demand that the two officers present during the time of the shooting be removed from street patrol pending a complete federal investigation that entirely exonerates them. Furthermore, it is urgent that investigation be done to expose the facts of the case and that the Claremont Police Department become responsible to answering the demands of its citizens.

Thank you for taking the time to read and consider our concerns and the purpose of our writing to you.

Sincerely,

Members of the Cultural Studies Student Organization, Claremont Graduate University