Police abuse

In DC: Join Mothers Who Have Lost Children To Police Violence

December 7, 2014 Nathan Sherd, www.codepink.org Resist! Ferguson, killed by police, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism

Voices of Grief and Struggle: Mothers Come to Washington DC to Demand Police Accountability. Hosted by Mothers Against Police Brutality, CODEPINK, National Congress of Black Women and Hands Up DC Coalition, mothers who have lost their children to police brutality will travel to Washington DC from December 9-11 to call for police accountability, policy reform and justice for victims’ families. The group will also pave the way for a larger gathering in Washington DC on Mothers Day. The women will come to Washington to advocate for changing existing laws that leave families vulnerable to police brutality and accountability loopholes. The changes they’d like to see include effective civilian reviews of police misconduct; transparency in investigations of police officers; a comprehensive, public national-level database of police shootings; and significant reforms to the 1033 program and other federal programs that equip police departments with military gear.

Corruption Of Lady Liberty By Law Enforcement Lobbies

December 7, 2014 Robert Brune, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Corruption, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police abuse

Awakening to this systemic breakdown of cops and courts being in bed with each other doesn’t come easy for most Americans. We have taken great pride in being a nation of some of the fairest courts throughout the world. But this isn’t the reality in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, as one after another case of a cop killing an unarmed minority goes without an indictment or ends in a mistrial, as in the Rodney King case. It has been happening for too long in America to continue calling these incidents of injustice a mistake or an odd circumstance. Lawrence O’Donnell outlines a team of assistant attorney generals deliberately giving the Darren Wilson grand jury copies of laws ruled unconstitutional 20 years prior. All the grand jury knew was that it was legal for police to shoot a fleeing suspect. Later they were handed a new document and told the copy provided weeks prior should be ignored. This is jury fixing, and there doesn’t appear to be any consequence to such behavior.

Nationwide Protests Condemning Police Brutality Continue

December 7, 2014 Staff, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! killed by police, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism

Demonstrations continued Saturday night in New York City and across the country, as protesters raised their hands and voices to decry abusive police tactics in light of the growing number of unarmed black men who have been killed by police officers. Picketers swarmed New York City's Grand Central Terminal and Times Square, four nights after a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner, and not quite two weeks after a Missouri grand jury refused to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. The protesters were also out honoring 28-year-old Brooklyn dad Akai Gurley, whose somber funeral was held Saturday, after he was shot dead by a NYPD officer on Nov. 20 in a Brooklyn public housing project stairwell. Tensions have been running high throughout the country after it was revealed that Wilson would not be indicted for killing Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Protests inFerguson were at times violent, but most other cities have held almost entirely peaceful demonstrations -- with cries of "Hands up, don't shoot," "I can't breathe," and "Black lives matter," richocheting from coast to coast.

Missouri Students Risk Serious Penalties For Walkout Protests

December 7, 2014 Mariah Stewart, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Education, Ferguson, Free Speech and Assembly, Police abuse

After high school students across the country walked out of class earlier this week calling for greater police accountability, one school district in the very Missouri county where teenager Michael Brown was killed chose to highlight the repercussions for students who left their classrooms. Hazelwood School District in north St. Louis County also consulted with local law enforcement to increase school security. The stricter security measures made Hazelwood West High School feel like “a prison,” one student said. “At lunch there are officers at every exit, and you can’t leave class to use the bathroom without a police escort,” the student told The Huffington Post. After Hazelwood high school students walked out on Tuesday, Superintendent Grayling Tobias issued a statement noting that the district does "not condone disruptive behavior."

NYPD Uses Military-Grade Sonic Weapon On Eric Garner Protesters

December 7, 2014 Aaron Cantú, www.alternet.org Resist! Police abuse, police brutality

Two nights ago at about 1am, at the intersection of 57 East and Madison Avenue in Manhattan—a populated area about four blocks from Columbus Circle—the NYPD used a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) to disperse about 100 protesters who were on the streets. Footage captured by YouTube user James C shows the weapon in use beginning at the1:58 mark. Protesters scattered in response to the sound, and either a live officer over a PA system or an automated voice intermittently told protesters between sound blasts that they could not interfere with “vehicular traffic” without risking arrest. The LRAD is deployed multiple times throughout the 5:00 minute video clip. One person who was present at the scene, Moth Dust, a photographer, said people became aggravated after the LRAD was used and began throwing trash and rocks in the direction of police. She said she was affected by the sound waves. “I thought I was fine until I realized I was getting dizzy and migraine was spreading to all over my face,” she said. LRADs were used in the first days of unrest in Ferguson Missouri, and have been used by police at protests throughout the world. They were developed by the US military after an insurgent attack on the US.S. Cole in Yemen in 2000, and were used by the NYPD against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Low Wage Workers: “We Can’t Breathe”

December 7, 2014 Richard Long and Robert Borosage, www.ourfuture.org Resist! Class war, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Police abuse, Racism

As powerful protests of the New York Eric Garner grand jury decision – We can’t breathe – swept across the country, low wage fast food and retail workers walked off their jobs in some 180 cities, demanding a living wage and the right to organize. People are stirring, no longer willing to put up with an economic and political order that gives them no way to breathe. The Garner demonstrators are not looking for a technical fix – putting cameras on police, retraining them, de-militarizing them. They are demanding justice. The fast food and retail workers are also protesting injustice – an economic order in which they have no way to breathe. Their stories are heart-rending. They work for years at a minimum wage that forces them to rely on taxpayer subsidies for food and medical treatment. They are forced into part-time work with no routine schedules, making it impossible to do the planning needed to raise a child or hold the two or three jobs needed to support a family. They lose hours and lose their apartments. Their children live on edge of desperation. Any attempts to organize are crushed. They are disposables in multi-billion dollar chains where CEOs are paid – as the CEOS of McDonalds and Starbucks are paid — $9200 an hour. They cannot breathe.

Civil Rights Movement Came Out Of A Moment Like This

December 7, 2014 Dani McClain, www.thenation.com Strategize! Civil Rights, Police abuse, Racism

Back in August, some observers drew comparisons between the shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. If parallels to civil rights movement history are helpful now, then let yesterday’s announcement that a Staten Island grand jury won’t indict the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death be a sign that we’re somewhere closer to 1963—when a series of devastating setbacks and subsequent widespread outrage transformed the civil rights struggle—than we are to Till’s lynching, that earlier consciousness-raising moment. There was a perfect storm this week: the continuing fallout of the failed indictment of Wilson; the news of the outcome in the Garner case; a Cleveland newspaper’s efforts to discredit and sling mud on the parents of a 12-year-old boy killed by police. This moment has the potential to catapult change

Newsletter: People Power Grows, Demands Justice

December 6, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, Fracking, Minimum Wage, Net Neutrality, Police abuse, Racism, TPP

This week tens of thousands of people in the United States flooded the streets to demand racial justice. It is one of many issues that has been building for years, reaching the tipping point and seeming to explode in a national awakening. We also saw that in the last two weeks with national protests for living wages. Four years ago when we organized the occupation of Washington, DC at Freedom Plaza, we listed 15 crisis issues that the country needed to face, poverty wages and the injustice in criminal enforcement, including racially abusive police practices, were two of them. None of these 15 core issues has been adequately dealt with. In each there are people working to build support for their cause; each has the potential to explode on the national scene – some already have. This newsletter highlights five current campaigns and mobilizations that are demanding social, economic and environmental justice.

Nationwide Protests Are Bringing Issue Of Police Abuse To Forefront

December 5, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, DC, killed by police, New York (NY), Oakland, Police abuse, police brutality, Portland, Racism, San Francisco, Washington

Below are a series of headlines, photos and opening paragraphs from major media sources describing how they covered the nationwide protests against the grand jury decisions in police shooting cases in New York and Ferguson as well as police abuse which has become a nationwide epidemic. Some papers like the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where there were major protests did not cover the local protests in their communities. Others, like the Washington Post, focused more on the politics of the issue with photos of protests in DC and nationally. The Associated Press summarized the night of protests writing: "Thousands and thousands of diverse people united by anger took to the streets from New York City to San Francisco for a second straight night to protest a grand jury clearing a white police officer in the chokehold death of an unarmed black man. Grandparents marched with their grandchildren. Experienced activists stood alongside newcomers, and protesters of all colors chanted slogans. A 61-year-old black woman was accompanied by her daughter and twin 10-year-old grandchildren, a boy and a girl. She said it was important to her that the children saw a crowd that was racially mixed and diverse in many other ways all insisting upon the same thing - that something must be done." That was the message, too, in cities across America: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis Oakland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., among them.

The United States Erupts For Justice

December 4, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Justice, killed by police, Militarized police, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism

Across the United States people took to the streets in response to the Staten Island grand jury decision in the Eric Garner killing. The second grand jury to refuse to indict a police officer who killed an unarmed African American, along with the killing of 12 year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, has led to protests throughout the United States. These protests have been building for many years as the killing of African Americans and abusive relations between police and citizens has become all too common. Watching the corporate mass media tonight often seemed like watching Global Revolution Live. Live video from multiple sites in New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Cleveland, Chicago . . . of people shutting down roadways, bridges, tunnels, subways and demonstrating their opposition to police abuse. Under hashtags #EnoughIsEnough, #ThisStopsToday and #BlackLivesMatter expressed the desire for transformative change in the behavior of US police, the relationship between police and people and an end to racist, militarized policing. It is good to see the mass media finally reporting on the deeply rooted problem of abusive policing but the explosion seen today has been building for years.

120 Mile March From Ferguson To State Capital

November 30, 2014 Lynette Holloway, www.theroot.com Organize! Ferguson, Police abuse, Racism

To call attention to what it sees as a flawed U.S. criminal justice system after a grand jury declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown, 18, the NAACP on Saturday is to begin a 120-mile, seven-day protest march from Ferguson, Mo., to the governor’s mansion in Jefferson City. The march is to begin at 12 p.m. Central at the Canfield Green Apartments in Ferguson, near where Brown was shot and his body left lying in the street for hours on Aug. 9, the NAACP said in a statement. The purpose of the march is to call for new leadership of the Ferguson Police Department, beginning with the police chief, and for reforms of police practice and culture in Ferguson and across the country, the release states. “Our ‘Journey for Justice: Ferguson to Jefferson City’ march is the first of many demonstrations to show both the country and the world that the NAACP and our allies will not stand down until systemic change, accountability and justice in cases of police misconduct are served for Michael Brown and the countless other men and women who lost their lives to such police misconduct,” Cornell William Brooks, NAACP president.

United Nations Condemns US Over Torture & Injustice

November 30, 2014 Ed Pilkington, www.theguardian.com Educate! Guantanamo Bay, Immigration, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism, Solitary Confinement, Torture

The United Nations issued a report on torture by the United States and it should be quite an embarrassment to every American. Not only is the US violating international laws against torture in its military actions and treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, but the report also criticized the violation of US laws against torture. The report noted the widespread police brutality common in the United States and the lack of accountability for police who mistreat people. The report also criticized the mistreatment of prisoners held in solitary confinement as well as botched executions. The UN also concerns over the mistreatment of immigrants, expedited deportation without adequate due process and lack of adequate protection for asylum seekers. . The report is an indictment of government in the United States at every level. The UN criticized the United States for not cooperating with the investigation and providing full information.

Sustained Protests Begin At US Justice Department Dec. 1

November 30, 2014 Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, www.blackagendareport.com Resist! Ferguson, killed by police, Militarization, Police abuse, police brutality, Racism

The Hands Up Coalition DC calls on Attorney General Eric Holder to stand with the people of Ferguson—and every other community in the United States whereA communique white police routinely slaughter black citizens—and intervene in this case. The local DA in Missouri hid behind the grand jury so he wouldn't have to face political consequences. It's time for the President or the Attorney General to declare a state of emergency: not because of what the citizens of Ferguson may do, but rather, based on the demonstrated assault the police department has waged against Ferguson citizens for decades. A communique released earlier this week by the young people of Ferguson made clear that they are not asking for Officer Wilson to be killed, or to be shot and left in the street, or to be lynched. Rather, they are asking that a white police officer, who shot an unarmed black teen in front of witnesses be brought to trial in a system that was created and is maintained daily to provide justice. They want Officer Wilson brought into that system—not shielded from it by the grand jury.

What It’s Like To Be the Target Of NYPD Surveillance

November 30, 2014 Tessa Stuart, www.villagevoice.com Educate! Infilitration, Police abuse, Privacy, Surveillance

It was here, on this corner, on a Friday in the fall of 2013, that Thadeaus received confirmation of something he had long suspected: He was being watched — closely — by the NYPD. The police knew the names of all of the organizations to which he belonged, and had informants inside at least one of them. They knew he would sometimes moonlight as a DJ and dutifully noted which parties he attended, which events he played. He learned from a New York Times journalist that he was under surveillance. The NYPD, he was told, suspected Thadeaus may have been "the bicycle bomber" — a shadowy figure responsible for detonating a makeshift grenade outside a military recruiting center in the middle of Times Square in 2008. Their evidence was thin: They knew he sometimes hung out with other bicycling enthusiasts and activists, and that he was, at one time, the administrator of an anarchist blog that posted a news article about the Times Square bombing several hours after it occurred. . . . Shortly after filing their complaint, a few of the activists involved went out to a café with a retired FBI agent, a man who had gone undercover with right-wing militias during his time with the bureau. They asked him, as someone who had infiltrated and surveilled groups, how they might prevent it from happening to them, or at least identify the informants in their midst. His advice? Don't even try. The NYPD and the FBI, he told them, "have endless resources to create covers for themselves. You should just keep doing the work that you're doing, and don't try to get to the bottom of it, because it will waste your time, it will be a distraction, and it will destroy your organizations."

An Instructive Afternoon in Ferguson

November 30, 2014 Bruce Gagnon, www.space4peace.blogspot.com Educate! Ferguson, Police abuse, Racism

The brand new looking police department and municipal court building was likely built on the backs of black residents paying these outrageous "fines" over many years. Those in power are not likely going to be eager to shut off that pipeline of easy cash anytime soon. It's a modern plantation system and the Michael Brown killing gave local black residents the impetus to express their pent up rage. My first, middle, and last reflection on the painting of the boards on the windows was what I'd call a typical American reaction to such things - create a facade, a false front, an illusion, go Hollywood. I asked several of the white folks painting the boards if doing so was not an admission that things are not really changing - after all the boards are still up in the windows and you are just trying to make the best of a bad situation. It was when I said that that several of the folks got the most agitated with me - the only thing worse than putting up a false front in America is for someone to challenge the illusion. Let's all go on pretending that everything is just fine and dandy.

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