Blood On Their Hands — The Racist History of Modern Police Unions

[During the Occupy Movement against the “1 %”, many activists were ambivalent about or opposed to including such issues as “stopping police killings” and “ending mass incarceration”, because some organizers insisted on including the police (“unionized workers”) in the over-broad concept of the “99 %”  —  thereby siding with police repression and state-sponsored violence against Black and Brown people.  This article breaks down some of the history of these police unions and how they ensure I’m,unity and prevent accountability for police who murder.  —  Frontlines ed.]

by Flint Taylor, In These Times, January 14, 2015

Police unions have always played a powerful role in defending cops—no matter how brutal and racist their actions. (Ben Musseig / Flickr)

Outraged by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s statements concerning the killing of Eric Garner, Patrick Lynch, the longtime leader of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), the NYPD’s officers union, recently made the outrageous assertion that the Mayor had “blood on his hands” for the murder of the two NYPD officers.

In Milwaukee this past fall, the Police Association called for, and obtained, a vote of no confidence in MPD Chief Ed Flynn after he fired the officer who shot and killed Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed African American; subsequently, the union’s leader, Mike Crivello, praised the District Attorney when he announced that he would not bring charges against the officer.

In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a longtime supporter of racist police torturer Jon Burge, is now seeking to circumvent court orders that preserve and make public the police misconduct files of repeater cops such as Burge, by seeking to enforce a police contract provision that calls for the destruction of the files after seven years.  And in a show of solidarity with the killer of Michael Brown, Chicago’s FOP is soliciting contributions to the Darren Wilson defense fund on its website.

Such reactionary actions by police unions are not new, but are a fundamental component of their history, particularly since they came to prominence in the wake of the civil rights movement. These organizations have played a powerful role in defending the police, no matter how outrageous and racist their actions, and in resisting all manner of police reforms.

No Justice in Baltimore – No peace in Baltimore

[The Maryland officials blame the riot on “outside agitators” and on “groups of thugs roaming the streets attacking innocent people” — a description which many have applied to the Baltimore police in their recent murder of the innocent black man Freddie Gray — the most recent of a repeated chain of events across the country. — Frontlines ed.]

Baltimore erupts in riots after funeral of man who died in police custody

A man walks past a burning police vehicle, Monday during unrest following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Ian Simpson, Reuters, April 27, 2015

BALTIMORE – Rioters hurled bricks, looted businesses and set fires in Baltimore on Monday in violence that injured at least seven police officers following the funeral of a 25-year-old black man who died after he was injured in police custody.

The disturbances broke out just a few blocks from the funeral of Freddie Gray and then spread through parts of Baltimore in the most violent U.S. demonstrations since looting in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.

Resisting the War Against the Black and Brown Underclass

A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect. — WEB Dubois

November 25, 2014

Why We Won’t Wait

by ROBIN D.G. KELLEY

Wait. Patience. Stay Calm. “This is a country that allows everybody to express their views,” said the first Black president, “allows them to peacefully assemble, to protest actions that they think are unjust.” Don’t disrupt, express. Justice will be served. We respect the rule of law. This is America.

We’ve all been waiting for the grand jury’s decision, not because most of us expected an indictment. District Attorney Robert P. McCulloch’s convoluted statement explaining—or rather, defending—how the grand jury came to its decision resembled a victory speech. For a grand jury to find no probable cause even on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter is a stunning achievement in a police shooting of an unarmed teenager with his hands raised, several yards away. Distilling 4,799 pages of grand jury proceedings to less than twenty minutes, he managed to question the integrity of eyewitnesses, accuse the 24-hour news cycle and social media for disrupting the investigation, and blame alleged neighborhood violence for why the removal of Mike Brown’s body from the pavement had to wait until morning. McCulloch never indicted a cop in his life, so why expect anything different now?

How Ferguson Showed Us the Truth About Police

[Making it plain and unavoidable — an artist sketches reality. — Frontlines ed.]

Published on YouTube on November 18, 2014

On August 9th, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot a black teenager named Mike Brown. Since then, the city has been protesting.

Michael Brown jury: putting a value on a black life in the United States

Protestors in Ferguson, Missouri. ‘When black kids fill the jails and the morgues so disproportionately we are in a state of extreme dysfunction.’ Photograph: Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty Images

Is there a price to pay for summarily killing a man, or is it just what happens in Ferguson when one man has a badge and the other too much melanin?

• 
• • Gary Younge, theguardian.com, Friday 10 October 2014

 

 

In September 1955, an all-white jury took just 67 minutes to acquit Emmett Till’s killers. Till, 14, said either “Bye, baby” or wolf-whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Mississippi. Three days later his body was fished out of the Tallahatchie river with a bullet in his skull, an eye gouged out and his forehead crushed on one side. “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop,” said one juror, “it wouldn’t have taken that long.”

In 2014, racism is more sophisticated but no less deadly. The grand jury investigating the killing of Michael Brown is taking its time. Brown, 18, was unarmed when he was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, in August. Wilson has been suspended on full pay and has not been charged. The four-month period that a panel usually convenes for expired last month. The judge gave the grand jury 60 more days to make a decision, so it has until January 7 to decide whether to indict Wilson. That’s a lot of pop.

Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, Peddler of Illusory “Justice” in Officially “Colorblind” US, Resigns

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. wipes away a tear at the White House while resigning his post. WIN McNAMEE / Getty Images

At least 135 people have been killed by U.S. police since #MikeBrown was #KilledByPolice in #Ferguson

At least 800 people have been killed by U.S. police since January 1, 2014.

At least 1550 people have been killed by U.S. police since May 1, 2013.

https://www.facebook.com/KilledByPolice

#KilledByPolice

@PigStateNews

US Army suicides up 80% since start of Iraq War

Suicide among young Army personnel rose 80% between 2004 and 2008, with 255 soldiers taking their lives in 2007 and 2008 alone.

Jill Langlois, Global Post, March 8, 2012

US Military suicide rates over the years of the Iraq war

Suicide among young Army personnel rose 80% between 2004 and 2008, according to the Los Angeles Times. In the last two years that had data available for the study — 2007 and 2008 — 255 soldiers took their lives. The authors of the study, the Army Public Health Command (APHC), estimated that 25% to 50% of the suicides were directly related to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Suicide rates among active US Army personnel were decreasing between 1977 and 2003.

The number of suicides is “unprecedented in over 30 years of US Army records,” according to the APHC, and the increase in deaths parallels the increasing rates of depression and other mental health conditions among soldiers, reported The Daily Mail.

The study’s authors called the high presence of mental health disorders among enlisted personnel “sentinels for suicide risk,” according to The Baltimore Sun. From 2000 to 2008, adjustment disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance-abuse disorders have soared among Army personnel. During the same time, the number of visits for mental health disorders in the Army nearly doubled.

“This study does not show that US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan cause suicide,” said Dr. Michelle Chervak, one of the study’s authors, a senior epidemiologist at the APHC, to ABC News. “This study does suggest that an Army engaged in prolonged combat operations is a population under stress, and that mental health conditions and suicide can be expected to increase under these circumstances.”

Philippines: What kind of peace do the people need? Revolutionary fighters on the deceptive call for a ‘peace zone’

Philippine Revolution Web Central

To Achieve Genuine and Lasting Peace, Roots of the Armed Conflict Must Be Addressed

Magno Udyaw, Spokesperson, NPA Mountain Province (Leonardo Pacsi Command)

December 04, 2011

The Leonardo Pacsi Command of the NPA-Mountain Province denounces the sham consultations and fabricated referendums being conducted by the Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) in the various municipalities of the province. Reports coming from the participants in the last PPOC “dialogue” held in Aguid, Sagada last November 16 indicate that PNP personnel including escorts of Philippine National Police regional director Gen. Benjamin Magalong and personnel from various provincial and municipal line agencies who went along with Gov. Leonard Mayaen were allowed to cast their votes.

Indicative of the previous informal plebiscites held in five other municipalities earlier, the question written in the ballots furnished to the registered participants was not about the peace zone, but formed as “Do you want peace – Yes, No, Undecided”. This deceptive formulation coupled with delegate-stacking maneuvers clearly reveals the bullying tactics of the provincial government in calling for a province-wide peace zone. Who would not want peace, but on what basis and of what kind?

Justice for Oscar Grant: Reactions to Mehserle Sentence. Protests and Arrests

Youth Radio’s Mural Tribute to Oscar Grant by Miguel “Bounce” Perez

Reactions to Mehserle Sentence: Public Rally

Reactions to Mehserle Sentence: Protests Lead To Arrests

November 5: Killer Cop Mehserle Sentenced to Two Years in Prison

{This is the first post-sentencing story issued by FOX 2-KTVU, which has performed as the killer’s publicist, after the judge springs the killer‏ with the smallest sentence he could give.  After the Grant family spoke out in outrage at the judge’s sentence, KTVU’s Rita Williams came back time and again to dismiss the family’s rage–continuing her promotion of this killer,  and her dehumanization of Oscar Grant and the Grant family.  We are waiting to hear the voices and the verdicts of the people.–ed]

1:22 pm PDT November 5, 2010

LOS ANGELES — A former BART police officer was sentenced to two years in prison Friday — but credited with nearly a year already served in jail — for the slaying for Oscar Grant III on a Bay Area transit system platform in January 2009.

In sentencing Grant, Judge Robert Perry also dismissed a defense motion for a new trial and tossed out a gun enhancement charge that could have added another four to 10 years to Johannes Mehserle’s sentence.

Mehserle’s involuntary manslaughter conviction had a sentencing range of two to four years. State law also allowed Perry consider granting Mehserle probation under unusual circumstances.

Perry credited Mehserle with time served — 292 days. So Mehserle would be serving a little over a year in prison. In issuing his decision, Perry recognized the community would be upset but said that he did his best and had “not asked for the case.” “Tensions ran high in the courtroom all morning long as a man was escorted out shortly after the motions debate began for an outburst. Perry told the jammed pack Los Angeles County Superior Court courtroom he would not tolerate any outbursts from the crowd.