Police abuse

Herman Wallace: ‘Angola Three’ Inmate Dies Days After Release From Solitary

October 4, 2013 Staff, www.theguardian.com Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Police abuse, Racism, Solidarity

"A 71-year-old man who spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana has died, less than a week after a judge freed him and granted him a new trial. Herman Wallace's attorneys said he died Friday at a supporter's home in New Orleans. Wallace had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and stopped receiving treatment. US district Judge Brian Jackson had ordered Wallace released from the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola on Tuesday after granting him a new trial. Jackson ruled women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted Wallace in the stabbing death of a 23-year-old prison guard, Brent Miller"

The 5th Annual Black Panther Party Film Festival

October 4, 2013 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police abuse, Racism

The 5th Annual Black Panther Party Film Festival: Proceeds from our film festival are used to supply commissary for Political Prisoners October 3rd-5th, 2013 Maysles Cinema 343 Lenox Ave New York, New York 10027 cinema@mayslesinstitute.org Suggested $10 donation at the door for all screenings. WE WANT freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. Films include: Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, In My Own Words, Hard Time and Herman's House.

Video Documenting Police Protest Tactics

October 4, 2013 Paul Sullivan, vimeo.com Strategize! Occupy, Police abuse, Video

In this ten minute video, Paul Henri-Sullivan documents NYPD tactics in crowd control. He follows an OWS protest with his camera focused on the police. He sees how the police white shirts direct arrests as the protest gains momentum in order to weaken the protest. The police consistently tell the crowd to keep moving and get out of the streets, but than at the direction of a white shirt, police go into the crowd and arrest people, often at the specific direction of the who to arrest. They will often throw the person to the ground so that it becomes a spectacle arrest, one that other protesters can see in order to intimidate them, or to draw other protesters out to un-arrest the person so they can also be arrested. Consistently targeted are men wearing dark clothes and a bandanna. Sometimes it seems the police commanders have specific people in mind or, perhaps, know specific people due to police infiltration. Sullivan continues to film until he finds himself under arrest as well. As often happens, it is a minor charge that gets the protester off the street and then months later the charges are dropped.

Stop Repression Of Democracy In South Korea

October 1, 2013 Gregory Elich, Tim Shorrock, Hyun Lee, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Democracy, Police abuse, South Korea, Surveillance

Democracy in South Korea is under attack. The ruling Saenuri Party of President Park Geun-hye and the National Intelligence Service have launched a witch hunt to purge progressive voices from the political process. On August 28, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), formerly known as the Korean CIA, raided the offices and homes of the Unified Progressive Party, which holds six seats in South Korea’s National Assembly. Three members were arrested during the raids, and lawmaker Lee Seok-ki was later stripped of immunity and placed under arrest. The NIS charged that members of the Unified Progressive Party were plotting rebellion, aiming to take up arms against the government in the event of war with North Korea. The sole evidence for these outlandish claims was a transcript said to be taken from a surreptitious filming by an informer of two meetings held by the Unified Progressive Party in May.

Five Texas Police Departments Ban Tasers

September 28, 2013 Katie Rucke, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Police abuse

About 16,000 law enforcement agencies internationally use Tasers, but this weekend, five police departments in North Texas — Mansfield, Richland Hills, Crowley, Murphy and Burleson — announced they had removed Taser guns from the list of equipment used by officers. While none of the Texas-based police department have explicitly explained why they decided to remove the Tasers, Pete Shulte, a private attorney, told a Texas blogger he thought the departments enacted the ban to protect themselves from lawsuits. Between 2001 and 2012, Amnesty International reported that more than 500 people in the U.S. had died after being shocked with Taser-technology either during their arrest or while in jail. The group urged police departments across the U.S. to at minimum lessen the frequency with which they use the weapon.

Family Of Teen Who Died After Police Taser To Hold March

September 27, 2013 Staff, www.miamiherald.com Resist! Police abuse

The family of Israel Hernandez-Llach, the teen graffiti artist who died after being tasered by a Miami Beach police officer, will hold a peaceful march on the two-month anniversary of his death. An internal investigation into the events of Hernandez-Llach’s death has not produced answers, event organizers said. The march, to be held at 3:30 p.m. Oct 6 on Lincoln Road and Washington Avenue, is to demand justice for the 18-year-old graffiti artists known as Reefa. The family wants responding officer, Jorge Mercado, to be charged and disciplined, according to event organizers. The family also wants the Miami Beach Police Department to change its policy regarding the use of stun guns. They are asking the state attorney and the Miami Beach City Manager to help their cause.

Obama Tells UN America Opposes Violence To Suppress Dissent

September 26, 2013 David Lindroff, www.thiscantbehappening.net Resist! Occupy, Police abuse

Nowhere was Pres. Obama's lying so blatant and obscene in his speech to the UN as when he vowed that “we will not stop asserting principles that are consistent with our ideals, whether that means opposing the use of violence as a means of suppressing dissent...” This, after all, was being said just one week after the second anniversary of the launching of the Occupy Movement, which we now know, thanks to documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice under the Freedom of Information Act, was crushed nationwide by a campaign of violent police assault coordinated at the highest levels of the FBI, Homeland Security Department and other federal police and intelligence agencies

Wrongfully Convicted US Torture Victim Talks About Being “A Free Man At Last”

September 22, 2013 Staff, www.socialistworker.org/ Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Police abuse

"After he was dragged from the apartment, Marvin was beaten by Chicago police under the command of Jon Burge. So was his co-defendant Ronnie Kitchen. Burge and the white officers and detectives he commanded are known to have used torture techniques against as many as 200 African American and Latino suspects--suffocation with a typewriter cover; electrical shocks to sensitive areas, including their genitals; Russian roulette; and savage beatings. Unlike Marvin, Ronnie signed a false confession to the crime. "I never held it against him," Marvin says. "I was a bigger guy, I could take it--I weighed over 200 pounds. Ronnie, he was a little thing, like 150 pounds. They just beat on him. I could hear him screaming down the hall." Deena adds, "It wasn't his fault that he signed a confession. What was he supposed to do? It was the cops that were wrong."

Chris Hedges On “The Origins of Our Police State”

September 17, 2013 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Police abuse

" JaQuan LaPierre, 22, was riding a bicycle down a sidewalk Sept. 5 when he noticed a squad car pulling up beside him. It was 8:30 on a hot Thursday night at the intersection of Bond Street and Jackson Avenue here in Elizabeth, N.J. LaPierre had 10 glass vials of crack cocaine—probably what the cops were hoping to find—and he hastily swallowed them. He halted and faced the two officers who emerged from the cruiser. “We are tired of you niggers,” he remembers one of the officers saying. “We’re tired of all this shooting and robberies and violence. And we are going to make you an example.” He was thrown spread-eagle onto the patrol car. “What I bein’ arrested for?” LaPierre asked."

How I Called the Cops And Almost Got Shot: The Politics Of Being A “Threat”

September 10, 2013 Arun Gupta, www.truth-out.org Educate! Police abuse, Racism

"Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama aside, there's a desperate need for a new Reconstruction today as much as there was 50 years ago, when the tide shifted against America-style Apartheid. The much-needed judicial and legislative victories against stop-and-frisk do not address how individual fears harden into iron bars of segregation. And while the race line has blurred into class, we are still two countries, separate and unequal."

#O22 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality

September 8, 2013 Staff, www.capbsd.org Organize! Police abuse

National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. At sundown, we will have a vigil and speak out for the lives lost followed by a light brigade action to #FILMTHEPOLICE while distributing flyers to educate the community on knowing your rights to film and while filming law enforcement. Please bring candles, signs, cameras and have the ability to video tape.

Reports From Egypt Of Youth Activists Arrested, Abused

September 3, 2013 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Egypt, Police abuse, Wars and Militarism

Prisoners were called upon one by one and shoved into the anteroom, most having great difficulty opening their eyes as they were exposed to the light. Some had large bruises on both their eyes, while others nursed open and festering wounds on their feet and legs. The police aggressively handcuffed us and threw us to our knees, before doing the same to the other 30 people they'd ushered through. We were then extensively screamed at and beaten, before the guards shoved us back up the stairs. On the way, I caught a glimpse into the fourth cell through a little slit in the door; behind it was a woman cradling a baby in her arms. After being herded outside we were crammed into a prison transport vehicle, where I had a brief chat with a Syrian prisoner. He'd been locked up for 20 days, hadn't been given any food for the first three and was unable to get in touch with his family to inform them of his whereabouts.

Update: Burning Man Volunteers Not On Strike

September 3, 2013 JG Vibes, www.intellihub.com Educate! Police abuse

Last week while reporting on the heavy police presence at the Burning Man festival we came across an interview with someone claiming to be a be a member of the Burning Man staff. In the interview, which was conducted by Burners.me a reputable source for information on Burning man, the source claimed that volunteers would be going on strike if the police did not stay out of the playa. [1] In recent days since both our article, and the interview at Burners.me made its way around the internet, some people who are on the crew reached out to say that this person was only speaking for themselves, and that their sentiments were not shared by the rest of the crew. One long time crew member who wrote us had the following to say:

Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing NSA’s

September 2, 2013 Scott Shane and Colin Moynihan, www.nytimes.com Educate! Drug Policy, Police abuse, Privacy, Surveillance

For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs. The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant. The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

Activists the US Military Targeted & Spied Upon Were Designated ‘Domestic Terrorists

September 2, 2013 Kevin Gosztola, Educate! Police abuse

Brendan Dunn and Jeffery Berryhill, who both helped organize actions, including nonviolent civil disobedience, as part of Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) from 2006 to 2009 in Olympia and Tacoma, Washington, were listed in the domestic terrorist database. Dunn and Berryhill and two other activists were listed with “their photographs, contact information, identifying personal information and false information claiming a propensity for violence and property destruction.” The lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase, where evidence is being put together for a civil trial, but it is a remarkable case because it is proceeding forward because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last December the military could be sued for damages for spying on activists.

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