Category: Police Repression

Why Baltimore Is Burning

By Kevin Powell
BK Nation

I am from the ghetto. The first 13 years of my life I grew up in the worst slums of Jersey City, New Jersey, my hometown. If you came of age in one of America’s poor inner cities like I did then you know that we are good, decent people: in spite of no money, no resources, little to no services, run down schools, landpersons who only came around to collect rent, and madness and mayhem everywhere, amongst each other, from abusive police officers, and from corrupt politicians and crooked preachers, we still made a way out of no way. We worked hard, we partied hard, we laughed hard, we barbequed hard, we drank hard, we smoked hard, and we praised God, hard.

And we were segregated, hard, by a local power structure that did not want the ghetto to be seen nor heard from, and certainly not to bring its struggles out in plain sight for the world to see.

Indeed my entire world was the block I lived on and maybe five or six blocks north south east west. A long-distance trip was going to Downtown Jersey City on the first of each month so our mothers—our Black and Latina mothers—could cash their welfare checks, buy groceries with their food stamps and, if we were lucky, we got to eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken or some other fast food restaurant on that special day.

When I was about 15 I was badly beaten by a White police officer after me and a Puerto Rican kid had a typical boy fight on the bus. No guns, no knives, just our fists. The Puerto Rican kid, who had White skin to my Black skin, was escorted off the bus gingerly. I was thrown off the bus. Outraged, I said some things to the cop as I sat handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. He proceeded to smash me in the face with the full weight of his fist. Bloodied, terrified, broken in that moment, I would never again view most police officers as we had been taught as children: “Officer Friendly”—

Being poor meant I only was able to go to college because of a full financial aid package to Rutgers University. I did not get on a plane until I was 24-years-old because of that poverty and also because I did not know that was something I could do. These many years later I have visited every single state in America, every city big and small, and every ghetto community you can name. They all look the same.

Abandoned, burnt out buildings. Countless churches, funeral parlors, barber shops, beauty salons, check cashing places, furniture rental stores, fried chicken spots, and Chinese restaurants. Schools that look and feel more like prison holding cells for our youth than centers of learning. Playgrounds littered with broken glass, used condoms, and drug paraphernalia. Liquor stores here there everywhere. Corner stores that sell nothing but candy, cupcakes, potato chips, soda, every kind of beer you can name, loose cigarettes, rolling paper for marijuana, lottery tickets, and gum, lots and lots of gum.

Then there are also the local organizations that claim to serve the people, Black and Latino people. Some mean well, and are doing their best with meager resources. Others only come around when it is time to raise money, to generate some votes for one political candidate or another, or if the police have tragically killed someone. (Continued)

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How It Usually Works: Deconstructing a Media Police Coverup

Media Had Already Bought Police’s Fantasy Version of Walter Scott Killing Before Video Surfaced

By Adam Johnson

FAIR via Alternet

April 8, 2015  – The New York Times (4/7/15 [3]) released a video of a black South Carolina man Walter Scott being shot, casually and without apparent mercy, eight times in the back by white police officer Michael T. Slager. The media’s outrage [4] after the video’s publication was righteous and swift. The state of South Carolina followed suit, filing murder charges [5] against Slager. Indeed, the video offers no ambiguity whatsoever:

Before this shocking video surfaced, however, most of the local press coverage, per usual [6], followed the police’s official narrative and amplified a storyline that, in retrospect, was entirely made up.

The Scott shooting, as Think Progress’s Judd Ledgum pointed out [7], provides unique insight into the way the police use inherent asymmetry of information to assert their narrative:

Between the time when he shot and killed Scott early Saturday morning and when charges were filed, Slager — using the both the police department and his attorney — was able to provide his “version” of the events.

He appeared well on his way to avoiding charges and pinning the blame on Scott.

Then a video, shot by an anonymous bystander, revealed exactly what happened [8].

In all police killings, one side–the victim–is, by definition, dead. So the “both sides” type of reporting we’re so often used to almost invariably becomes a one-sided airing of accounts, facts and selective details from the police side that the corporate media repeats without question. Indeed, Charleston’s local ABC affiliate would begin [9] their report with, what turned out to be, an outright lie:

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — A man involved in a traffic stop that turned into a physical altercation with a North Charleston police officer died Saturday after being shot by the officer.

But the New York Times video shows there was no “physical altercation.” There was someone being shot in the back eight times while trying to run away. The report would go on to mix up police assertion with fact again, seemingly inventing witnesses [10] who weren’t there:

Police and witnesses say Scott tried to run from Slager before turning to fight for the officer’s taser. It was during that scuffle that the officer fired his service weapon, fatally wounding Scott.

But what witnesses? I have asked the reporter, Greg Woods, to name the witnesses he documented; as of press time, he has not responded. Woods did not, in any of his reports, actually quote any witnesses saying they saw a “fight.” What appears to have happened is that Woods was told by police there were witnesses and he reported it, uncritically.

In another piece [11]–that, in fairness, did have interviews with the victim’s family–local CBS affiliate WCSC effectively handed the report over to North Charleston police for their uninterrupted retelling of events:

Slager deployed his taser weapon to detain the driver but was unsuccessful, Pryor said.

Police say an altercation then began between Slager and Scott, resulting in a fight for the officer’s taser.

During the fight, Scott gained control of the taser to use it against the officer who then fired his service weapon at the suspect, Pryor said.

While en route, the sergeant reported that he heard Slager say that he deployed his taser and was requesting for back up units, and seconds later reported “shots fired and the subject is down, he took my taser.”

We now know, by the sheer accident of someone filming the event, this narrative was false. We know Scott never “gained control” of a taser, and we know Scott only received medical attention from police minutes after they planted a weapon on him and handcuffed him as he lay dying. But the media, in an effort to report “both sides,” ends up transcribing the deceptive police report verbatim.

While providing an initial qualifier of “spokesman said,” NBC affiliate News 2, would do one better and go on [12]to drop this modifier altogether and simply report the police account as fact: (Continued)

Continue reading How It Usually Works: Deconstructing a Media Police Coverup

We’re Spending Billions to Support the Most Corrupt, Abusive Arm of Law Enforcement

By Susan Grigsby
Daily Kos via Alternet
March 15, 2015

These guys are scary.

In March 2014, three women from Honduras—a mother, her 14-year-old daughter and another teenage girl—crossed the Rio Grande near Abram, Texas. According to Garrett Graff’s [3] article in Politico Magazine, they surrendered to U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP) agent Esteban Manzanares of the Border Patrol. Instead of taking them to the holding area in McAllen, Texas, Manzanares put them in the back of his patrol vehicle and drove around for a couple of hours.

    Then he stopped his truck in a wooded area. He raped both the mother and the daughter. He slit the mother’s wrists and tried to break the daughter’s neck, leaving them for dead in the brush.

    He drove off with the third woman bound in his green-and-white heavy-duty Border Patrol truck with a red-and-blue light bar on top, a Department of Homeland Security logo on the door and a U.S. flag on the hood. Somewhere out in the borderlands, the agent left his third prisoner hidden, bound with duct tape.

At the end of his shift, he went back for the girl, took her to his apartment where he raped her. Meanwhile, one of his earlier victims, still alive, had stumbled across the field of a surveillance camera and Border Patrol agents were sent to pick her up. Questioning the two victims led the agents to suspect that a CBP officer was involved and they called the local FBI office. Finding duct tape and blood in Esteban Manzanares’ service vehicle, the FBI agents headed to his apartment. There, Manzanares shot himself after the FBI knocked on his door and identified themselves as federal officers. The girl was found in his apartment, alive, naked and bound to a chair.

Border Patrol Agents conduct an operations check on a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle on the South Texas border.
Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. To protect against a secret flood of IEDs on the border?

After an internal bureaucratic struggle that forced him to turn to the secretary of the DHS, the new U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) [4] director, Gil Kerlikowske, issued a statement [5] that said, in part:

    I want you to know that I consider these actions, if true, to be reprehensible and I know they are not representative of the agents of the U.S. Border Patrol. … I am deeply sorry that this incident occurred and am committed to doing everything in my power to prevent incidents like this from occurring again.

There are two things of note about this story. One is that Esteban Manzanares was already under suspicion [6] for allowing two border violators to go free, but the backlog of misconduct allegations at the inspector general’s office was so great that he was allowed to remain on duty until an investigation could be done.  (Continued)

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