Not Just in America: French Authorities Cover for Abusive Police Too

Tue, 10/06/2015

thiscantbehappening.net Editor’s Note:

This article from Ferguson In Paris, an anti-police brutality group in France, does not contain a byline. The reason for this is because members of that group say they must maintain anonymity as much as possible remain to avoid abusive retaliation from authorities and others in France. “We publish under the name of the organization because of fierce repression regarding activists dealing with police brutality,” explained a Ferguson In Paris member during a recent email exchange with ThisCan’tBeHappening.net. The claimed support by French government authorities and other for freedom of speech following the fatal shootings at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office last January 2015 apparently do not extend to French activists opposed to brutality by French police. (Ferguson In Paris, an organization that fights against police brutality and racism/discrimination in France, works in solidarity with anti-brutality groups in the United States.)
AN UGLY UNDERSIDE OF FRANCE: RAMPANT POLICE BRUTALITY
In 2005, the human rights monitoring organization Amnesty International published a report titled: “France: The search for justice.” That Amnesty report examined allegations of serious human rights violations by law enforcement officials across France between 1991 and 2005. Those human rights violations by law enforcers included unlawful killings, excessive use of force, torture, and other mistreatment. Racist abuse was reported in many cases examined by Amnesty and racist motivation appeared to be a factor in many more. As that report noted, the persistent targets of police abuse in France are “foreign nationals or French nationals of foreign origin.”

On the basis of the evidence examined, Amnesty International concluded that a pattern of de facto impunity existed with regard to police and other law enforcement officials in France. Failures by French officials “to address” police abuses have created a “climate of effective impunity for law enforcement officers,” the report stated.

US: The Torture of Democracy

The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’

• Exclusive: Secret interrogation facility reveals aspects of war on terror in US

While US military and intelligence interrogation impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles and even a cage – focuses on American citizens, most often poor, black and brown. ‘When you go in,’ Brian Jacob Church told the Guardian, ‘nobody knows what happened to you.

’ 

Spencer Ackerman, The Guardian

Chicago, Tuesday 24 February 2015

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

Chicago ‘black site’: former US justice officials call for Homan Square inquiry

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

• Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
• Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
• Shackling for prolonged periods.
• Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
• Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

Ferguson is Familiar to Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australia knows the cynicism exposed by Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson
Larissa Behrendt, The Guardian , Tuesday 25 November 2014

Watching the events in Ferguson, Indigenous Australians will immediately draw a parallel with Australia’s response to black deaths in custody‘Watching the events in Ferguson unfold raises similar questions about Australia’s own legal system.’ Riots in Redfern, 2004. Photograph: AAP

After a Missouri grand jury declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch said that the decision was based upon physical and scientific evidence, not “public outcry or political expediency”.

This call for objectivity does little in a situation where autopsies show Wilson had shot Brown at least six times, twice in the head. McCulloch seemed to compromise his own objectivity by blaming social and news media for beating up a story, rather than acknowledging that when a young person is shot by law enforcement, people expect a level of accountability.

 

Watching the events in Ferguson unfold raises similar questions about Australia’s own legal system. The parallel is immediately drawn with the failure to secure a conviction in the case of 36-year-old Cameron Mulrunji Doomadgee, who died in a Palm Island lockup over 10 years ago.

Attention Americans: This is What Street Harassment ACTUALLY Looks Like

By Matt Agorist on November 6, 2014

A recent viral video of a woman walking down the street in New York, posted by Hollaback, sets out to expose the evils of catcalling. The video quickly went viral and Hollaback is using this viral exposure to push for legislation to “end catcalling.”

This sounds all fine and dandy to someone who doesn’t think past their own self-serving single layer government protected bubble of happiness. However, in reality, responding to someone’s speech with government force is horrific.

Sure, catcalling can be offensive, rude, derogatory, (insert negative connotation here) and it should most definitely be stigmatized and frowned upon by society.

However, non-violent speech does not directly violate or threaten the rights of any individual. Those who call for quelling the free speech of another person through the initiation of government force, are far more dangerous to society than a homeless drunk man vomiting up whatever lewd thoughts pop into his head as a pretty woman walks by.

Another Black LA cop speaks out

Ex-LA Cop Brian Bentley on Dorner Manifesto: ‘Not Only do I Believe it, but I Lived it’

Ex-LAPD officer speaks out about the LAPD, racism, and Christopher Dorner   

by Jasmyne A. Cannick, EURweb

[Ex-LAPD Officer Brian Bentley today in Los Angeles, Calif.]

*Brian Bentley, 49, doesn’t agree with what Christopher Dorner — the ex-cop at center of a massive manhunt for the killings of three people—has done, but he certainly understands it.

As a former LAPD officer, Bentley, who is now an author, says that a Dorner-like situation was just a matter of time.

“It took longer than I thought it would for something like this to happen.”

In fact, Bentley says that when he was a police officer, there were frequent postings of “look out” bulletins on the walls at police stations featuring officers who’d been terminated and who were believed to have vendettas.

“When the Department terminated you, they intentionally tried to ruin your life,” Bentley explains.  “That’s how they discredited you.  Dorner isn’t the first ex-police officer to have a manifesto or some sort of hit list.”

And he should know.

[Ex-LAPD officer Brian Bentley]

Brian Bentley left the LAPD in 1999 after serving ten years with the Department. He was a police officer in 1992 during the uprising and was assigned to guard O.J. Simpson’s house in Brentwood during the infamous trial.  He served under police chiefs Daryl Gates, Bayan Lewis, Willie Williams, and Bernard Parks.  However, he was fired for writing the book One Time: The Story of a South Central Los Angeles Police Officer that detailed the massive misconduct and racism he witnessed during his time at the LAPD’s Southwest and West L.A. divisions.

He says that when he left the Department he had a manifesto of his own.  Not one that involved killing anyone, but a list of people who had wronged him during his time at the Department.

How to Avoid “Stop and Frisk”

Northern Ireland: Here Comes Trouble(s) — (again)

[Typically, bourgeois Brit media characterize rebellious violence in Northern Ireland as nonsensical and anarchistic, without good or understandable cause.  This is especially true since the highly touted peace deals were consummated years ago.  But today, conditions in Northern Ireland continue to worsen for the people as the economic crisis grows.  Farmers march in protest of milk prices, mass resentment grows at plans for a celebratory visit by the hated British monarchy, provocative Orange marches are staged, and the gap between the conciliating compradors of Sinn Fein and the abused and discarded working class youth in the streets is a faultline that the powers only address with force. — Frontlines ed.]

  ——————————————–

Police Wounded In Northern Ireland Violence

Sky’s David Blevins reports on the anarchy that emerged in Belfast as the annual Orange Order march reached an ugly end.

By David Blevins, Ireland correspondent, Sky News — Friday, July 13, 2012

Nationalist protesters face the police in Ardoyne in north Belfast after an earlier Orange parade returned back past shops in the area

At least 20 police officers have been injured during public disorder at a flashpoint in North Belfast.

Nationalist youths rioted for hours after a loyalist march on a contentious stretch of road.

The teenagers went from hurling missiles to ramming police lines with vehicles they had stolen.

Officers deployed water canon and later fired plastic bullets in an attempt to restore calm.

Police later came under gun attack. Officers escaped injury when at least 10 shots were directed at them.

Nigel Dodds, the Democratic Unionist MP, witnessed the unrest in his constituency.

“There comes a point where everybody has to stand up against people who only are interested in violence,” he said.

The Orange Order had been told it must complete its annual parade earlier than usual.

Loyalists were outraged when the Parades Commission then permitted a nationalist protest march on the road.

Tension reached breaking point when rival factions came face to face, exchanged chants and threw bottles at each other.

Not for the first time, police were caught in the middle.

Protesters clash with police in Ardoyne following an Orange Order parade in north Belfast

Gerry Kelly, a Sinn Fein member the Stormont Assembly, said: “Let’s sit down, talk this out and come to some sort of accommodation. We have had worse problems to solve.”

North Belfast witnesses similar disturbances every July but they are now being fuelled by a power struggle.

Sinn Fein had called for calm but dissident Republicans made no such appeals.

Assistant chief constable Will Kerr, the officer in charge of policing parades in Northern Ireland, encouraged “individuals and communities” affected by trouble to respond in a “calm and responsible manner”.

With the Orange Order demanding its right to walk traditional routes and Catholic residents objecting, the marching season often provides the backdrop for a period of tension on the streets.

Loyalists march to mark the victory of King William of Orange over the Catholic King James in 1690.

To some, it is tradition; to others, triumphalism and they rarely compromise.

2011–A Year of Global Resistance: An Image from Occupy UC Davis, California, USA

A University of California Davis police officer pepper-sprays students during their sit-in at an "Occupy UCD" demonstration in Davis, California. (Jasna Hodzic)

2011–A Year of Global Resistance: An Image from Occupy Portland, Oregon, USA

A protester gets sprayed in the face with pepper spray at an Occupy Portland protest. (Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian)

Police Fire Tear Gas, Flash Grenades as Occupy Oakland fights Tent City Eviction

[After scenes and statements from the Oakland streets, Democracy Now interviews an activist from the Oscar Grant struggle (against police abuse and killings) who links the long struggle for justice with the current battle, and a county Supervisor from San Francisco, who is trying to prevent any similar police suppression of Occupy San Francisco. — Frontlines ed.]

Democracy Now, October 26

If you are trained by network lies, here’s an unexpected truth surprise

MSNBC Reporter SLAMS NYC Police Brutality! • Occupy Wall Street

[This report is so unexpectedly truthful–and so unusual–it exposes the daily lies that pass for news. — Frontlines ed.]

October 22: 16th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation

When:  Saturday, October 22, 2011–12 noon

Where:  Third and Palou Streets, San Francisco

Across the U.S., Black, Latino, and poor neighborhoods are treated like occupied territory by increasingly militarized armies of law enforcement. People are criminalized and brutalized for their perceived status – socioeconomic, immigration, mental health, and/or racial, gender, or sexual identity. People living in our communities, especially youth, are routinely stopped, harassed, beaten, and even killed.

§  In Chicago, the home of the first Black president, police have shot 44 people so far this year, mostly youth of color, including 13-year-old Jimmell Cannon, who was shot eight times.

§  NYPD continues to stop hundreds of thousands of youth of color every year for the most minimal suspicion, fewer than 10% of which result in arrest, and far fewer in charges or conviction.

§  Police nationwide continue to kill with very little consequence. Twelve Miami cops shot at 22-year-old Raymond Herisse 100 times, then threatened those who recorded the incident, destroying their cellphones. A Tucson SWAT team shot at 26-year-old Iraq War veteran Jose Guerena over 70 times, claiming that he fired at them and then leaving him to bleed to death in his home. Both their allegations of gunfire and drug-dealing were later revealed to be false. In New York and New Jersey, at least 27 people have been killed by police since October 22 of last year, while at least 35 people have been killed by law enforcement in Washington State in the last 12 months. The killing of 22-year old Oscar Grant in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009 resulted in a rare conviction for the officer who shot him; however, he was freed after mere months in prison, while people protesting the outrageous verdict were met with police violence and mass arrests.

Videotaping Philadelphia Police–legal rights and repressive reality

Even a top cop concedes a right to video arrests – but the street tells a different story

September 03, 2011|

BY JAN RANSOM, ransomj@phillynews.com

TAMERA MEDLEY begged the police officer to stop slamming her head – over and over – into the hood of a police cruiser.

Thinking they were helping, passers-by Shakir Riley and Melissa Hurling both turned their cellphone video cameras toward the melee that had erupted on Jefferson Street in Wynnefield, they said.

But then the cops turned on them.

Riley had started to walk away when at least five baton-wielding cops followed him, he said, and they beat him, poured a soda on his face and stomped on his phone, destroying the video he had just taken.

Meanwhile, two officers approached Hurling, urged her to leave and, after exchanging a few words, slammed her against a police cruiser, Hurling said. They pulled her by her hair before tossing her into the back of a cop car, she said.

Why NOT take the cop’s word for it….when they say they killed the kid because “……………..

[The following excerpt from “Are Cops Constitutional?” by Roger Root, raises significant reasons to approach police testimony with great skepticism, and with demands for verification of everything.  The lives of many have been lost due to police aggression against all kinds of people, especially in traditionally oppressed or culturally/politically targeted communities.  The continuing losses of lives at the hands of police requires the highest attention and solidarity among the people in victimized communities and all who want an end to all attacks on our common humanity. — Frontlines ed.]

“Untold dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans have been shot in the back while fleeing police, even after the Garner decision. Police have shot and killed suspects who did nothing more than make a move,¹²³ reach for their identification too quickly,¹²⁴ reach into a jacket or pocket,¹²⁵ “make a motion” of going for a gun,¹²⁶ turn either toward or away from officers,¹²⁷ ‘pull away’ from an officer as an officer opened a car door,¹²⁸ rub their eyes and stumble forward after a mace attack,¹²⁹ or allegedly lunge with a knife,¹³⁰ a hatchet,¹³¹or a ballpoint pen.¹³² Cops have also been known to open fire on and kill persons who brandished or refused to drop virtually any hand-held object — a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle,¹³³ a metal rod,¹³⁴ a wooden stick,¹³⁵ a kitchen knife (even while eating dinner),¹³⁶ a screwdriver,¹³⁷ a rake¹³⁸ — or even refused an order to raise their hands.¹³⁹

Cops who shoot an individual holding a shiny object that can be said to resemble a gun — such as a cash box,¹⁴⁰ a shiny silver pen,¹⁴¹ a TV remote control,¹⁴² or even a can opener¹⁴³ — are especially likely to avoid liability. In line with this defense, police officers nationwide have been caught planting weapons on their victims in order to make shootings look like self defense.¹⁴⁴ In one of the more egregious examples ever proven in court, Houston police were found during the 1980s to have utilized an unofficial policy of planting guns on victims of police violence.¹⁴⁵ Seventy-five to eighty percent of all Houston officers apparently carried “throw-down” weapons for such purposes.¹⁴⁶ Only the dogged persistence of aggrieved relatives and the firsthand testimony of intrepid witnesses unraveled the police cover-up of the policy.¹⁴⁷

Resisting arrest, defending oneself, or fleeing may also place an American in danger of being killed by police.¹⁴⁸ Although the law clearly classifies such killings as unlawful, police are rarely made to account for such conduct in court.¹⁴⁹ Only where the claimed imminent threat seems too contrived — such as where an officer opened fire to defend himself from a pair of fingernail clippers¹⁵⁰ — or where abundant evidence of a police cover-up exists, will courts uphold damage awards against police officers who shoot civilians.¹⁵¹

As Professor Peter L. Davis points out, there is no good reason why police should not be liable criminally for their violations of the criminal code, just as other Americans would expect to be (and, indeed, as the constables of the Founding Era often were).¹⁵² Yet in modern criminal courts, police tend to be more bulletproof than the Kevlar vests they wear on the job. Remember that the district attorneys responsible for prosecuting police for their crimes are the same district attorneys who must defend those officers in civil cases involving the same facts.¹⁵³ Under the Framers’ common law, this conflict of interest did not arise at all because a citizen grand jury — independent from the state attorney general — brought charges against a criminal officer, and the officer’s victim prosecuted the matter before a petit jury.¹⁵⁴ But the modern model of law enforcement provides no real remedy, and no ready outlet for the law to work effectively against police criminals. Indeed, modern policing acts as an obstruction of justice with regard to police criminality.

The bloodstained record of shootings, beatings, tortures and mayhem by American police against the populace is too voluminous to be recounted in a single article.¹⁵⁵ At least 2,000 Americans have been killed at the hands of law enforcement since 1990.¹⁵⁶ Some one-fourth of these killings — about fifty per year — are alleged by some authorities to be in the nature of murders.¹⁵⁷ Yet only a handful have led to indictment, conviction and incarceration.¹⁵⁸ This is true even though most police killings involve victims who were unarmed or committed no crime.^159″

(Footnotes follow)————————————————————-

¹²³ OCTOBER 22 COALITION TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY ET AL., STOLEN LIVES: KILLED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT 307 (2d. ed. 1999) (hereinafter “STOLEN LIVES”) (saying officer shot and killed victim after victim ‘made a move’ following a foot chase).

¹²⁴ See id. at 207 (listing a 1993 Michigan case).

Spies in blue

[Police misconduct has long been a focus of activists–of those subjected to false arrests and false imprisonments, of targets of racial profiling, and of those facing attacks on and police suppression of political advocacy, of opposition to the systemic oppression of targeted communities, of class struggles, international solidarity movements, and revolutionary movements.

The history of such misconduct runs throughout US history—from the suppression of slave resistance and the abolition movements, of the insurgent working class and trade union movements, the resistance of Native American, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian and other occupied and colonized people, the McCarthy “Red Scares”, and the attacks on the civil rights and Black Liberation movements. 

Major political challenges to systemic police misconduct have been organized at various times.  The Black Panther Party’s campaigns for community control of police, organizing to make local police conduct transparent and accountable and prosecutable, was a major advance in re-setting even the concept of community control.  And, after the FBI’s COINTELPRO  program was exposed—a nationwide program to confuse, provoke, entrap, imprison and eliminate political opposition—activists unearthed many of the hidden local instruments of this FBI terror program, and in some places forced new policies on local and state levels against the abusive police.  

But even where such fights have been won, police misconduct has continued to be common.  FBI (and other repressive instruments)—now systematized under the banner of Department of Homeland Security—has worked to circumvent restraints on official abuse, whether by illegal surveillance and wiretapping, racial profiling, or ICE raids and mass deportations, to mention but a few.

The following article from the San Francisco Bay Guardian details the FBI’s enabling of police abuses, and their circumventing of restraints on San Francisco Police Department’s abuses. – Frontlines ed.]

A secret memo indicates that SF cops may be working as FBI spies — with no local oversight

April 26, 2011

Sarah Phelan, SF Bay Guardian

sarah@sfbg.com

San Francisco cops assigned to the FBI’s terrorism task force can ignore local police orders and California privacy laws to spy on people without any evidence of a crime.

That’s what a recently released memo appears to say — and it has sent shockwaves through the civil liberties community.