Police abuse

The War Zone Is America

June 22, 2020 By Andrea Mazzarino, Tom Dispatch. Educate! Militarism and War, Police abuse, Police violence, Racism

As a military spouse and therapist, it’s clear to me that, these days, whether people of color or not, active-duty servicemen and women, as well as veterans, generally face a host of difficulties in this country. They range from problems accessing much needed responsive healthcare services to social isolation from a civilian population that understands little about their experiences, to chronic illnesses and injuries they suffer, to repeated deployments in America’s forever wars. Now, add to all that the current showdown between highly militarized police and Black Lives Matter protesters, as well as the president’s deployment of the National Guard and his threats to deploy federal troops to quell protests in Washington, D.C. (and elsewhere). As one Washington therapist who works with military service members and their families told me, many veterans find that memories of combat are triggered by the sight of police in military-style equipment facing down crowds of civilians and, in response, they socially isolate themselves more.

Police Violence And Racism Have Always Been Tools Of Capitalism

June 21, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. Newsletter Capitalism, Police abuse, Police violence, Racism, Worker Rights and Jobs

The system-wide challenges the United States faces with policing are entrenched and deeply rooted. When the historical and current practices of police are examined, it is evident police have been designed to uphold the status quo including racial injustice and class inequality. Whenever political movements develop to respond to racial and class unfairness, the police have undermined their politically-protected constitutional rights. Police have used infiltration, surveillance, and violence against political movements seeking to end injustices throughout the history of the nation. It is the deeply embedded nature of these injustices and the structural problems in policing that are leading more people to conclude police must be completely transformed, if not abolished.

City Bar Calls For Investigation Following Arrests Of Legal Observers

June 19, 2020 By Tom McParland, Law.com. Resist! Legal Observers, New York City (NYC), Police abuse, Rebellion2020

The New York City Bar Association on Wednesday called on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York Police Department to “immediately investigate” the alleged targeting of nine legal observers earlier this month during a protest against police brutality in the Bronx. In a statement, the City Bar said it was “gravely concerned” by what it called “concerted efforts” in New York, and across the country, to interfere with the work of observers at mass demonstrations protesting systemic racism and police killings of black Americans. The City Bar specifically cited reports that legal observers associated with the National Lawyers Guild had been pulled out of a crowd in the Bronx, restrained with zip-tie cuffs and detained for 20 minutes. Some officers, the City Bar said, had “illegally accessed” the observers’ privileged documents and took down their personal information, while claiming not to know the function they were serving at the protests.

The Black New Yorker Who Led The Charge Against Police Violence In The 1830s

June 19, 2020 By Jonathan Daniel Wells, TIME. Organize! New York (NY), Police abuse, Racism, Slavery

At the apex of the kidnapping club were two members of the New York police force, Tobias Boudinot and Daniel D. Nash. Both had grown up in or near Manhattan and they shared a deep disdain for Black people. Like all members of the police force, Boudinot and Nash were poorly paid, inadequately trained, and largely uneducated. Boudinot in particular was constantly in debt, sued by creditors and desperate for the extra money he could make by capturing runaway enslaved people who had managed, against tremendous odds, to escape southern bondage and forge new lives in New York. The nation’s founding document, the Constitution, required free states to return runaways to southern masters, and Boudinot and Nash were all too willing to comply. The police with the explicit approval of Wall Street financiers and merchants dependent on slave-grown cotton, terrorized the 15,000 or so Black residents who called New York City home in the decades before the Civil War. Seizing Black men, women and children off the streets and arresting them as fugitive slaves who needed to be returned to southern masters.

Chris Hedges: Gaslighted By The Ruling Class

June 15, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost. Educate! Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Police abuse, Police violence, Racism

The elites have no intention of instituting anything more than cosmetic changes. They refuse to ask the questions that matter because they do not want to hear the answers. They are systems managers. They use these symbolic gestures to gaslight the public and leave our failed democracy, from which they and their corporate benefactors benefit, untouched. The crisis we face is not, as the ruling elites want us to believe, limited to police violence. It is a class and generational revolt. It will not be solved with new police reforms. The problem is an economic and political system that has by design created a nation of serfs and obscenely rich masters.

Scottish Parliament Votes For Immediate Suspension Of ‘Weapons Of Oppression’ Exports To US

June 12, 2020 By Jon Stone, Independent. Resist! Chemical Weapons, Militarized police, Police abuse, Scotland

The Scottish Parliament has called for the immediate suspension of exports of riot gear, tear gas and rubber bullets to the United States, in light of the police response to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. A successful motion, which was backed by 52 votes to 0 with 11 abstentions, says the parliament "stands in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and considers that the UK government must immediately suspend all export licences for tear gas, rubber bullets and riot gear to the US". Patrick Harvie, the Green MSP who proposed the successful amendment, said the "weapons of oppression", which the UK government has granted active export licences for, were being used by a "racist state" to "brutalise marginalise communities". The same motion also called for the establishment of a slavery museum in Scotland "to address our historic links with the slave trade".

Martin Gugino – The “Buffalo Protestor” And Our Friend

June 12, 2020 Jeremy Varon, Witness Against Torture. Educate! New York (NY), Police abuse, Police violence, Protest

Martin Gugino worked together in Witness Against Torture for years, a close-knit group dedicated to closing the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo and opposing torture. Our community is beside itself. None of us is surprised that it was Martin meeting the police line in a posture of non-violence. Martin is gentle, principled, and undaunted. Allied with the Catholic Worker tradition, he is also deeply committed to a tapestry of causes, from fair housing to immigrant rights. Guiding his activism is belief in the sacred power of non-violent resistance to injustice. If that makes him an “agitator,” as Buffalo’s police chief slandered him, then the world needs more agitators.

The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, Where Seattle Protesters Gather Without Police

June 12, 2020 By Evan Bush, Seattle Times. Create! Autonomous Zone, Police abuse, Rebellion2020, Seattle

Welcome to the CHAZ, the newly named Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, where most everything was free Tuesday. Free snacks at the No-Cop Co-op. Free gas masks from some guy’s sedan. Free speech at the speaker’s circle, where anyone could say their piece. A free documentary movie — Ava DuVernay’s “13th” — showing after dark. A Free Capitol Hill, according to no shortage of spray paint on building facades. And perhaps most important to demonstrators, the neighborhood core was free of uniformed police. A new protest society — centered on a handful of blocks in Seattle’s quirky, lefty Capitol Hill — has been born from the demonstrations that pushed the Seattle Police Department out of its East Precinct building.

From Occupation To ‘Occupy’: The Israelification Of US Domestic Security

June 12, 2020 Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. Educate! Israel, Occupation, Police abuse, Police violence

The Israelification of America’s security apparatus recently unleashed in full force against the Occupy Wall Street Movement, has taken place at every level of law enforcement, and in areas that have yet to be exposed. The phenomenon has been documented in bits and pieces, through occasional news reports that typically highlight Israel’s national security prowess without examining the problematic nature of working with a country accused of grave human rights abuses. But it has never been the subject of a national discussion. And collaboration between American and Israeli cops is just the tip of the iceberg. Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities.

NYPD Accused Of Deliberately Targeting Legal Observers

June 11, 2020 Jake Offenhartz, Gothamist. Educate! Legal Observers, New York City (NYC), NYPD, Police abuse

On Thursday evening before curfew, Rex Santus was standing alone on a quiet Mott Haven street corner when he caught the attention of NYPD officers passing in an unmarked minivan. As eight officers surrounded him, the 28-year-old CUNY law student identified himself as a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild, and explained his intention to monitor a nearby protest against racist police brutality. The officers accused him of “illegal counter-surveillance against police,” Santus said. They seized his notebook, reading from it and mocking him for writing that some cops had obscured their badge numbers. As the officers feigned ignorance about the role of legal observers, Santus recalled, an apparent warning blared from their police radios: “A lot of LOs out tonight.”

Chicago Freedom School Offered Food, Water And Rest To Weary Protesters Trapped Downtown

June 9, 2020 Justin Laurence, Chicago Book Club. Educate! Chicago, Food and Agriculture, Police abuse, Protest support, Rebellion2020

Last weekend, as thousands of protesters gathered Downtown, the Chicago Freedom School sprung into action, working to feed and transport those stuck in the Loop — but a surprise inspection by the city has the nonprofit worried about its future. The Chicago Freedom School, 719 S. State St., provides training to primarily Black and Brown youth to learn the fundamentals of community organizing. School leaders knew their members were out on the front lines, confronted with pepper spray and potentially trapped Downtown as curfew approached, bridges were lifted and CTA service halted May 30. The school offered a refuge.

One Way To Deal With Cops Who Lie? Blacklist Them

June 9, 2020 By Justin George and Eli Hager, The Marshall Project. Resist! Courts, Police abuse, Police accountability, Police lying

Kim Gardner has dropped more than 100 cases that relied on statements from the 29 officers who got on the list for alleged lying, abuse or corruption. And she won’t accept new cases or search-warrant requests from them, either. From Philadelphia to Houston to Seattle, district attorneys recently elected on platforms of criminal justice reform are building similar databases of their own. Often known as “do not call” lists, they are also called “exclusion lists” or “Brady lists” after a famous Supreme Court decision requiring prosecutors to disclose to defense lawyers information about unreliable police officers or other holes in their cases. The goal is to help prosecutors avoid bringing cases built on evidence from officers who are likely to be challenged in court, these new DAs say. Having a centralized list at a district attorney’s office, they say, allows for the gathering of institutional knowledge, so that if one prosecutor on staff knows about a bad cop, all the prosecutors do.

Agents Provocateurs Are Still A Real Threat To Our Movements

June 9, 2020 By Jacqueline Luqman, The Real News. Strategize! Agents provocateurs, Infiltrators, Police abuse, Rebellion2020

As ridiculous as that might sound, there is some sketchy business going on at some of these protests. Mysterious, all-black-clad white window smashers with umbrellas in Minneapolis. Mysterious, all-black-clad white women tagging businesses with Black Lives Matter and being run off by an actual black woman protestor for their trouble in another city. Mysterious pallets of bricks, allegedly showing up on city streets. Is it Antifa? Is it white supremacists? Is it the police? Whoever is behind these curious actions, the issue of agent provocateurs is real and is an ever-present challenge for organizations, movements, and protests. So how do we spot these agents in our midst? The white supremacists in the Hawaiian shirts and assault rifles are pretty easy to spot. Well, what about the undercover infiltrators? Here are some things to look for.

Healthcare Workers: From ‘Heroes’ To Targets Of Police Repression

June 9, 2020 Take Back the Bronx and FTP4 Medics, Left Voice. Resist! COVID-19, Healthcare workers, New York City (NYC), Police abuse

We healthcare workers were arrested and prevented from assessing many protesters with serious injuries who were cuffed on the ground crying for help, some visibly bleeding. Police informed us they had their own medics but had only two FDNY EMTs to triage a crowd of more than a hundred people. Police also refused to allow us to help people whose hands were zip-tied and visibly purple, only loosening ties on one protester, borrowing our shears. After detainees – who were prevented from even shouting their names and identifying information to legal observers nearby – were packed into jail cells scattered across multiple boroughs, the NYPD then followed protesters offering jail support, again including medics and legal observers with the correct documentation, to their vehicles where they again arrested essential workers for “curfew violation.”

From ‘I Have a Dream’ To ‘I Can’t Breathe’

June 9, 2020 Katu Arkonada, La Jornada. Educate! Fascism, Police abuse, Police Killings, Racism

The killing of George Floyd is just the tip of the iceberg of a system based on racism and class discrimination that allows 99% of deaths at the hands of the police to go unpunished, during the years 2013-2019, according to the website Mapping Police Violence. In 2019 alone, there were 1,042 people shot by the police. According to a Washington Post investigation, this represents a proportion, per million people, of 12 white persons, 23 Hispanic persons, and 32 African American people. That is to say, in the United States, you have a three times higher chance of dying by a police shooting if you are Black. Another terrifying statistic shows that although about 50% of all people murdered are white, about 80% of those given the death penalty have been condemned to die for having killed a white person.

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