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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Gee, you think we should discuss police brutality soon? |
Current rating: 0 |
by marco
(No verified email address) |
12 Jul 2002
Modified: 11:32:14 PM |
NY City has a police brutality hotline.
(646)336-6789
Should there be one in every city?
Is this as epidemic as it feels?
Sure seems like it! |
A patrolman local to me is on admin leave for
using deadly force on someone with a handgun.
He may or may not be justified in shooting
the man to disarm him. I don't want to waste
even a minute and a half debating that part of
it. My question is, did he need multiple shots
fired?
Police forces all over the Untied States right
now are completely out of hand. A municipality is
probably not going to reign them in without using
force themselves.
What to do?
If nothing else, we need to discuss this openly,
freely, and without harrassment. Someone in Inglewood
captured a cop beating a teenager nearly to death
last week. Now the L.A. police force is so powerful,
so corrupt, so immoral that they're pushing the
issue that there's warrant out for the videographer
in a clear and obvious attempt to discredit him.
Where's his immunity in exchange for his testimony?
Where's California's priorities? Damage control?
Killing the messenger?? We saw where that got California
in the electricity industry last summer. It SHOULD HAVE
BEEN MORE IMPORTANT TO ADDRESS ISSUES BRAVELY AND FACE
TO FACE, THAN COVERING UP, HARRASSING, DISCREDITING AND
FORTIFYING THE IMMORALITY.
At the same time the Inglewood case is raging, another
police brutality case seems to be growing organically
in Oklahoma into something just as "big." Or newsworthy
at least. Can we take those two cases in the context of
what's going on all over the nation? What's been going
on for years? Decades?
Are we ready to discuss apartheid? Can we discuss the
police state that's already here instead of pandering to
the mainstream sensibility and carefully talking about
the "future police state??"
Wake up people. It's here.
I was interrogated for two and a half hours last week
after taking three photographs of a police woman filming
protesters in Milwaukee.
http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=7907
http://mke.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=667
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=6069
http://radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=4991
Put this in the context of what's going on all over
the Nation State called "USA," and you tell an awfully
disturbing story.
(I tremble to even call it that. (USA - We are a very
divided nation right now. Mayhaps even more divided than
we ever were in our history - Is anyone ready to discuss
THAT??))
For crying out loud! Discuss something. Anything. Look
for issues, look for topics. Look for connections between
different events that are clearly being disconnected from
each other by the corporate media, the US government, and
the burgeoning world government.
http://atlanta.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=6048
This police state didn't begin September 12, 2001. It
was growing behind the scenes, quietly and discretely
since at least as early as the early 1980s.
http://www.sfbg.com/nessie/6.html
Some say promptly after world war II. Let's not argue which
month it began, let's start helping each other figure out
where in hell it came from and how we can kick it in the ass
and send it running off like the "scape goat" it deserves
to be.
Because then we need to figure out where these bullshit
faked war on drugs, war on terrorism, war on communists,
war on witches came from.
Only then can we continue telling ourselves and each
other that we live in a free country, a democracy or
a republic with something resembling representation.
marco
http://www.mp3.com/marcocapelli |
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Protesters Demand Jail for Cop in L.A. Beating |
by Dan Whitcomb
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
12 Jul 2002
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INGLEWOOD, Calif. (Reuters) - Hundreds of angry protesters marched on police headquarters on Friday, demanding jail time for a police officer seen on videotape beating a black teen, while in an odd twist the man who filmed the incident found himself behind bars -- his arrest also caught on tape.
Los Angeles black leaders were joined by prominent national activists, including former entertainer Dick Gregory and Martin Luther King III, as outrage grew over the latest accusation of police brutality in a city already tarred by the incendiary 1991 beating of Rodney King and bloody riots a year later.
"No justice, no peace, no racist police," the protesters chanted while holding fists aloft in a black power salute, carrying red, black and green flags and banners bearing slogans such as "This Happens Every Day in L.A."
One man, who would not give his name, burned a small plastic U.S. flag, explaining that "America is racist."
Marching on Inglewood city hall under a blazing sun, the crowd called for the firing, arrest and jailing of Jeremy Morse, the policeman who was filmed slamming handcuffed 16-year-old Donovan Jackson against a patrol car and punching him in the face.
"Put some stripes on this guy, behind bars," Civil rights attorney Leo Terrell told the crowd to wild cheers. "Jeremy Morse should be in jail right now."
Morse, who has reportedly been the object of other excessive force complaints, has been suspended on full pay while the July 6 incident is investigated.
KING SAYS COPS 'BEATING HEADS' AFTER SEPT. 11
Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, said nothing had changed in the history of police racism in the United States since his father's death.
"If I was going out in the street and beating somebody I'd be arrested," King said.
Referring to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that lead to broader powers for law enforcement, he said: "We almost had them whipped and then Sept. 11 happened. As a result of our fight against terrorism, the police have been re-empowered so they are out beating people's heads."
Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton had been expected to lead Friday's protest but did not show up. A spokesman said Sharpton had been delayed in New York.
Tony Mohammad, a spokesman for militant black leader Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, told the crowd, "Right now there is 100 percent dissent among the people. This city of Inglewood is on the brink of insurrection. Do the right thing or else."
Morse's lawyer has accused black leaders, including Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn and congresswoman Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat who represents the area, and media commentators, of condemning the 24-year-old officer before all of the facts were known and several investigations completed.
Attorney John Barnett told Reuters in an interview that Jackson grabbed Morse's testicles while his hands were cuffed behind him "and on that occasion the punch was seen in order to make that activity cease."
Meanwhile Mitchell Crooks, who videotaped the beating from a motel across the street where he was apparently living, was behind bars on Friday after dodging authorities who wanted him to testify before a grand jury inquiry into Jackson's beating.
CROOKS SAYS COPS HURT HIM
When district attorney's investigators caught up with Crooks as he arrived at a television studio for an interview, they arrested him on a warrant issued in northern California. Crooks was wanted there for failing to serve a prison term for petty theft and hit-and-run convictions in 1999.
A security camera caught Thursday's arrest on videotape and was broadcast on local television. Crooks, who earlier told a local radio program that he feared police would beat him, could be heard on the tape screaming for help.
Crooks, 27, spent part the night in the Los Angeles jail's hospital after claiming that police roughed him up.
His attorney, Andrew Vorzimer, said Crooks was slammed against a wall as he waited to testify before the grand jury. After he testified, Crooks was treated at a county hospital for a sprained shoulder, a bruised hip, bruises to his shoulders and wrists and numbness in one of his thumbs, Vorzimer said.
Crooks remained jailed without bail, awaiting a plane ride to Placer County in northern California, where authorities want him to serve his seven-month sentence. Placer County District Attorney Brad Fenocchio said Crooks could face more jail time for violating his probation in the misdemeanor case.
"Mr. Crooks still owes Placer County some original time on the charges," he said. "The court will (consider) that and the fact that he failed to turn himself in."
Fenocchio said Crooks' involvement in the Los Angeles case would not effect the alleged probation violation.
"We have a case that is completely separate and apart from what is going on in L.A.," he said.
Crooks' tape, which has been shown repeatedly on national television, sparked comparisons to the 1991 beating of King, which was also videotaped. The acquittal of four officers in that case led to the worst urban riots in modern U.S. history in which more than 50 people were killed..
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