Daughter of woman killed in hit ordered by NOPD officer holds final memorial
21st October 2024 · 0 Comments
By Arielle Robinson
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — Jasmine Groves, the daughter of Kim Groves, hosted the 30th and final memorial celebration for her mother on Sunday (Oct. 13) afternoon at the Fred Hampton Free Store in the Lower 9th Ward.
The event doubled as a birthday celebration for Jasmine Groves, who turned 43 on Monday (Oct. 14). Wearing a birthday sash, she thanked everyone for attending.
“My mom was actually planning my birthday when she got killed,” Jasmine Groves said.
The memorial celebration was small and intimate, with approximately 15 people, including friends and family of the Groves, attending to pay their respects.
Her mother, Kim Groves, was a 32-year-old single mother of three living in the Lower 9th Ward when she was killed by hitman Paul Hardy on Oct. 13, 1994, one day before Jasmine Groves’ 13th birthday. Hardy was hired by then-New Orleans Police Department Officer Len Davis to commit the murder.
Kim Groves had witnessed Davis and his partner, Officer Sammie Williams, physically assaulting a teenage boy she knew in her neighborhood and filed a complaint to the police. The word got back to Davis and he began planning revenge against her.
A jury sentenced Davis to death in federal court in April 1996. He still sits on death row at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana. Hardy was originally sentenced to death but then resentenced to life in prison after being deemed mentally unfit for the death penalty.
Jasmine said that she has been having these memorials to raise awareness about what happened to her mother and police corruption and brutality in New Orleans. Her great aunt and great grandmother began hosting memorial events in 1994 and she picked up the torch from them.
Jasmine said that she wants people to remember her mother for who she was, not just how she was killed.
“The reason I do this is so people can remember my mother for not just the lady that Len Davis got killed,” Jasmine Groves told Verite News. “I want you to know the mother of the neighborhood, the mother who raised three children on her own, the mother who said ‘Hey, I’m gonna take a stand, I’m gonna take care of my neighborhood.’ And again, the mother who was not feared but respected in the neighborhood because of that love.”
Jasmine Groves told Verite that she’s discontinuing the memorials to her mother because she wants to direct her energy toward Supreme Mothers of Joy, a nonprofit she started this year with her friend Christina Joy Buckley Pierre, to support single parents.
Jasmine also works alongside New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police (NOCOP), a police reform group that advocates for greater civilian oversight of the NOPD.
She said that she is trying to find the resources to build a museum in front of her family home that honors the people who have lost loved ones to police violence.
Jasmine Groves said that her mother acted as a mother to other children in the community, and she wants her to be remembered for that.
“That’s who I want them to know – Kim Groves, that legend that said ‘Hey, I’m not having it, no corruption nowhere, no turning the left cheek. We are one village. That’s not just my next door neighbor’s child; that’s mine too,’” Jasmine said.
At the memorial, Jasmine addressed the city and U.S. Department of Justice’s request on Sept. 27 to begin the process of ending the NOPD’s federal consent decree, which has been in place since 2013.
She said that she does not feel safe with the possibility of the consent decree ending.
“The consent decree protected the citizens and had to make the police accountable,” Jasmine said. “I feel like it shouldn’t be taken out of place.”
This article originally published in the October 21, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
