Meeting to take place at West Hollywood’s Plummer Park Sat., Oct. 21
The public is invited to attend a community meeting Saturday, October 21, 2017, in West Hollywood to get a briefing on the Gemmel Moore homicide investigation. Special guests include LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, civil rights attorney Nana Gyamfi and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
The meeting is being presented by community advocates Justice4Gemmel + All of Ed Buck’s Victims and will take place Saturday, October 21 at 11 a.m. at Plummer Park (7377 Santa Monica Blvd.) in West Hollywood.
“I need the community’s help,” said LaTisha Nixon. “They are trying to push my son’s death under the rug. They’re aren’t taking my son’s death seriously or the other victims who have come forward. Not the sheriff’s department, the district attorney or the politicians he’s donated to that are supposed to represent the best interests of the people. This isn’t right. Ed Buck is preying on young men like son—young, Black, gay and vulnerable. My son may not have been a white woman and Ed Buck may not be Harvey Weinstein but Gemmel’s life mattered and so do the other young Black gay men Ed Buck has taken advantage of.”
Moore, 26, was found dead of a crystal meth overdose in Democratic donor Ed Buck’s West Hollywood home on July 27. His death was immediately classified as an accidental methamphetamine overdose by the coroner but now the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau is taking a closer look after Moore’s personal journal was published.
In his journal, Moore wrote, “I honestly don’t know what to do. I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” a December entry reads. “Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth it was very painful, but after all the troubles, I became addicted to the pain and fetish/fantasy.”
“My life is at an alltime [sic] high right now & I mean that from all ways. I ended up back at Buck [sic] house again and got munipulated [sic] into slamming again. I even went to the point where I was forced to doing 4 within a 2day [sic] period. This man is crazy and its [sic] sad. Will I ever get help?”
“Slamming” refers to gay men injecting drugs such as mephedrone, GHB, or crystal meth.
Moore’s last entry, dated December 3, 2016, reads, “If it didn’t hurt so bad, I’d kill myself, but I’ll let Ed Buck do it for now.”
Since Moore’s journal was published, other young gay black men have come forward with photos, emails, and text messages recounting similar stories involving Buck and accusing him of being a sexual predator, kidnapping, forced drug use, injecting unconscious black gay men with crystal meth, filing false police reports to cover his crimes, coercion, pimping, and pandering.
Similar to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, Ed Buck is a well-known contributor to the Democratic Party and has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic causes and candidates over the years. His Facebook page boasts dozens of photos of him with such luminaries as presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, California Gov. Jerry Brown, California Democratic Party chairman Eric Bauman, and even Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. Campaign finance records show that Buck has given at least $30,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Locally, the money has been spread around to members of Congress and the state legislature, and even Los Angeles’s city and district attorneys — the two offices responsible for filing criminal charges in cases like this.
For more information, justice4gemmel.com.
