Updated, January 2, 2015 — Two weeks ago, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the thousands of people protesting against police brutality and murder to temporarily suspend their generally peaceful public protests until the completion of the funerals for the two officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were killed last Saturday in Brooklyn by an emotionally troubled lone gunman. The NYPD took that as an invitation to disgracefully launch protests of their own at the funerals of officers Ramos and Liu.
The head of the Police Benevolent Association, Pat Lynch — who has taunted the families of those murdered by police — has, along with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, ratcheted up tensions by ridiculously linking the murder of the two cops to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests. Lynch has nonsensically asserted that the Mayor, who has tried to reduce and contain abuses by police in New York City, has “blood on his hands” and warned the Mayor not to show up at the funerals for cops killed on the job — a position spurned by the family of Officer Ramos, who welcomed the Mayor’s heartfelt condolences.
“There’s blood on many hands tonight. … Those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protests that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did every day. We tried to warn, ‘It must not go on. It cannot be tolerated.’ That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor. When these funerals are over, those responsible will be called on the carpet and held accountable.“
– Pat Lynch
- LISTEN HERE to Amy Goodman’s and Juan Gonzalez’s excellent reportage on their show Democracy Now! broadcast live every weekday on WBAI radio, 99.5 FM in New York City.
Lost in Lynch’s vicious rhetoric and supremely unprofessional conduct — mirrored by the NYPD Sergeants’ Union — is any understanding that the shooter, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who had absolutely nothing to do with the protests, had earlier in the day entered his former girlfriend’s apartment in Baltimore with a stolen key and shot her, before heading to New York City. Unfortunately, the NPYD is failing to make the critical link between domestic violence against women and the commission of wider acts of violence, and its union chief is cynically using the killing of the two police officers as an opportunity to smear those who condemn police violence, including the Mayor, to achieve (they hope) better bargaining position in the stalled contract dispute and in the upcoming election to determine who will head the Police Benevolent Association. Truth and decency are unknown flavors in the mouths of the police union honchos.
Even normally thoughtful NY Daily News columnist Mike Lupica has jumped on the NYPD’s rhetorical bandwagon, reframing the fight against the national epidemic of police murder of, primarily, Black young men, as follows:
“Still: If this mayor does not speak up against the kind of rhetoric that has been directed at the NYPD since the grand jury on Staten Island decided not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, then he is suborning such rhetoric, and the great and dangerous lie behind it: That the people of the city need protecting from those sworn to protect them.”
Mayor de Blasio, whose kids are bi-racial, expressed the heartwrenching legitimate concern of most Black and Latino parents in having to instruct his kids to be careful and wary in dealing with the police. Lupica, who is White, never had to warn his kids. It’s a different universe of daily experience. Lupica’s tragic blindspot is what empowers Patrick Lynch’s violent rhetoric, which in turn sets the climate for the tragic murders we’re seeing.
The aptly named Lynch’s outrageous inflammatory bleatings constitute two decades of “judgmental lapse”. Fifteen years ago outside a Bronx courthouse following the murder of the unarmed 23-year-old Amadou Diallo by four of NYPD’s plainclothed finest, whose fingers triggered 41 bullets in the direction of the gentle, slight, unarmed Diallo (19 of them finding their target at close range — and what of the other 22 shots that went awry?), Lynch, in full inflammatory throttle, issued the following asinine assessment to the media and to the people of New York City:
“This is a tragedy, not a crime! Our lives are worth a hundred times more than a criminal’s!”
And thus, Lynch turned the innocent Diallo — a Black immigrant worker from the country of Guinea — into “a criminal” and rationalized his assassination. There’s little doubt that Lynch’s ongoing racist rhetoric contributed to the climate in which the two police officers were murdered. The blood Lynch decries falls on his own hands, and — like Lady Macbeth — for those families there is not enough water in all the oceans of the world to wash it off.
The racial line is exacerbated by the “aggressive” policing tactics — known as “Broken Windows” — favored by NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton and endorsed by Patrick Lynch. It reaches deep into the NYPD as well as the civilian population. The policy was developed by the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank, and adopted by Bratton during his first turn as NYC Police Commissioner under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Reuters news agency interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. According to Reuters reporter Michelle Conlin, “all but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.”
The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.
The black officers interviewed said they had been racially profiled by white officers exclusively, and about one third said they made some form of complaint to a supervisor.
All but one said their supervisors either dismissed the complaints or retaliated against them by denying them overtime, choice assignments, or promotions. The remaining officers who made no complaints said they refrained from doing so either because they feared retribution or because they saw racial profiling as part of the system.
Systemic racism within the police departments of this country feeds into and even rewards the horrific behaviors of individual cops. The role of the police as an institution under capitalism is primarily to defend corporate property and “property values” at the expense of human rights. It uses racism to rationalize and sometimes mask its primary role. Far too many individual police officers take that as license to act with impunity, especially when egged on by their union chief, their sergeant’s organization, by District Attorneys who have no interest in achieving indictment from a Grand Jury, and by the noted “blue wall of silence” which lines up alongside murderers in their midst and publicly defends their fellow cops’ actions.
As one protester remarked, “Body cams, by themselves, will do nothing except to turn stops and arrests into a Reality TV show.”
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Listen to several talks on the subject, including my own, and some audio from a protest in Brooklyn. Click here.
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Listen here to report from protest in Newark.
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Here’s the first of several sets of interviews during the great march against police repression and murder Dec. 13 in New York City.
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Excerpts from Concert for Ferguson with Rev. Billy Talen, Bernardo Palombo and Joan Baez
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First Night of Chanukkah Demo at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn
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Interview with Sister Justice Dragonfly during Dec. 13 march in NYC.
Below, please read several thoughtful articles on the need for the Movement against police brutality and killings to continue, and in fact to escalate. Black Lives — and ALL Lives — Matter.
– Mitchel Cohen
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Athlete-Activists Can’t Be Scared Silent After the Murder of Two NYPD Officers
BY DAVE ZIRIN
Over the last month, we have seen a veritable “Sports World Spring” as athletes have spoken out on politics in a manner unseen since the 1960s. They have been inspired by the #blacklivesmatter demonstrations directed against the killing of unarmed black men and women by police as well as the inability of the criminal justice system to deliver justice.
The most remarkable part of these protests was not just their breadth nor the stature of the athletes involved but that commissioners and coaches seemed to be allowing it and, in some cases, even nodding in approval. Clearly suspending LeBron James for being upset about the killing of unarmed African-Americans was not seen as savvy public relations.
Now, in the wake of the horrific killing of two NYPD detectives, everything has changed. This eruption of athlete activism will probably not only come to a close but get thrown down the memory hole where the Masters of Sports keep the lost athletic years of Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Craig Hodges. In other words, management support will die. The sports bosses — and probably friends and family as well—will tell players that it is time to shut up and play. They will be told that it would be the heights of insensitivity to be seen as criticizing the police while officers, their families and many others are in mourning. It would be tasteless, bad for business, and even dangerous.
If the athlete-activists do retreat into silence, it would be a tragic mistake. Now more than ever, players who wore the slogan “I Can’t Breathe” a week ago should wear it today. In fact, trying to find your breath when police and media are declaring war against a peaceful movement could not be more critical.
For players to say that standing with the families of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and others would now be “inappropriate” is a concession to political actors who are maliciously reframing why they stepped up in the first place. The senseless murder of two police officers by a suicidal lone gunman with a history of mental illness in no way negates the single most important organizing principle of the movement: that black lives matter. Those like Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, and their ilk who are equating this movement with violence and murder have never given a damn about opposing police brutality. Instead, they see themselves as foot soldiers in a bigger project of chilling, burying or even criminalizing all criticism of anyone who wears a badge.
The entire focus of everyone involved in this movement — from the people in the street to LeBron and Derrick Rose — has been to demand that African-Americans be afforded the same humanity as everyone else: to be treated as people and not “demons” that need to be put down. There is nothing in the slogans “black lives matter” or “I can’t breathe” or the marches and die-ins that remotely suggests that projecting violence toward police is a solution to police violence. In fact, we have seen athletes like the NFL’s Reggie Bush and pro wrestler MVP who have been both part of the movement and have police officers in their immediate family. Given the explicit calls for vengeance by the NYPD and the rush by the media to place the blame for the shooting on people protesting violence, athletes could use their stature to assert that this movement is just.
I am well aware that this is easy as hell for me to say. It’s not my risk. It’s not my paycheck. It’s not my livelihood. But when you lend support to a movement, you bear a responsibility for that movement’s well being. Black lives matter, and in fact that needs to be expressed with urgency. As long-time criminal justice organizer Keeanga Yahmatta-Taylor said to me, “I can hardly imagine the fear coursing through black New York today. Don’t let your young sons out of the house. This is what we can’t give into — the siege in black communities to avenge murder in the name of the law.” It’s easy when management is patting you on the back, thousands are in the street and Fox News is in the corner mumbling to itself. But now the sunshine is gone and the chill is settling in. If LeBron or Derrick Rose—hell, if Nik Stauskas or Jeremy Lin — can turn their spotlight into even a little bit of sunlight, it will make a difference. If you believed that LeBron, Kenny Britt, Ariyana Smith, the women of Berkeley and so many other athlete activists were on the side of right a week ago, then there is no reason to not believe that they are still right today. Their voices are needed more than ever.
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Political Mutiny in the New York Police Department. Does DeBlasio Order Officers to Turn in their Badges?
BY DR. MARSHA COLEMAN-ADEBAYO, BAR editor and columnist
“The movement to expose police crimes against black and brown civilian populations in the US has forged a wedge between power centers that have the potential to be explosive and politically significant…”
In light of the killing of two New York police officers, NYDP police officers literally turned their backs on Mayor de Blasio Saturday night. Armed law enforcement employees, either in urban battlefields or imperial outpost war theaters are under discipline to respect and protect superiors in their chain of command. The defiant action led by Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) president Patrick Lynch sent an undeniable message to Mayor de Blasio that he could no longer depend on the unconditional commitment of the officers to protect him or his family.
Mayor de Blasio remarked to a group of police officers at the Brooklyn Hospital, “We’re all in this together.” The officers responded, “No we’re not.” This declaration indicates that there are no rules beyond their incestuous protections of the PBA and their rogue sense of entitlement.
In the military, the commanding officer would have sent them to the Brig immediately. Certainly, there are different rules of engagement between militarized police departments and the actual military but the message cannot be lost on those who depend upon police forces to provide personal protection. de Blasio, may wish he had the flexibility to discipline officers in his militarized police force as the armed forces enjoy. “It’s f–king open season on us right now,” one officer said. “When is he (deBlasio) going to step up?” These statements reflect open contempt for the office of the mayor and the people of New York. Since 1670, slave patrollers and their contemporaries, police officers have enjoyed open season and distained their duty to protect and serve Black people. For example, President Harry Truman fired highly decorated General Douglas Mac Arthur for insubordination.
The movement to expose police crimes against black and brown civilian populations in the US has forged a wedge between power centers that have the potential to be explosive and politically significant. Police, who are accustomed to unconditional power to murder and maim Black and Brown youth with immunity are now facing challenges to white supremacist prerogatives and the language is vitriolic. PBA president Patrick Lynch belched: “There’s blood on many hands tonight… That blood . . . starts on the steps of City Hall, in the Office of the Mayor,”
The powerful PBA had the gall to warn their superiors, the NY Mayor and Speaker, to stay away from the funerals of the fallen police officers.
CONTINUED HERE
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA, that is available through amazon.com. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered vanadium mine workers. She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet, and coordinates the DC-based Hands-Up Coalition (www.handsupcoalitiondc.com) Contact Marsha at: MarshaCAdebayo@blackagendareport.com and www.marshacoleman-adebayo.com
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NYPD Throw Entirely Inappropriate Tantrum At Funeral After Mayor Suggests They Can’t Kill Black Kids With Impunity
Proving they’re often not just racist and brutal but petty, vengeful, childish, grossly insensitive and “stunningly thin-skinned,” hundreds of the same people who called for no protests until slain police officers were laid to rest chose to protest at the funeral of one of their own by turning their backs on a democratically-elected-by-73%-of-the-population mayor who has (mostly) supported the right of free speech, movingly cited “a history that still hangs over us” in describing his fear over the fate of his own bi-racial son, and reasonably called on police to stop being racist, brutal et al in the name of doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is protecting and serving. Though there were thousands who didn’t join them, the idiot cops who turned away from the video of de Blasio acknowledging the “family of the NYPD, which is hurting so deeply” thus managed to politicize a personal tragedy, to upstage and disrespect a grieving family, and to offer what Keith Olbermann called “a giant EFF YOU to the citizens of this city.” In other words, wrong place, wrong time, wrong cause, and time to be big boys now. The officer killed, Rafael Ramos, was by all accounts one of the good guys: A 40-year-old, Puerto Rican father of two who cared about his community, served as a marriage counselor for his church and was studying to become a police chaplain. The thugs protesting – led by a toxic police union president who has blamed de Blasio and protesters for having “blood on (their) hands” – are not, and are on the wrong side of history. This will be a long hard changing of the guard, but it will come. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton “If we can learn to see each other, to see that our cops are people like officer Ramos and officer Liu, to see our communities filled with people like them too…If we can learn to see each other then, when we see each other we’ll heal.”
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Cops Threaten a Blue Coup in New York City
By GLEN FORD
Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report
“The police union chief instructed his members to impose a martial law-type policing regime on the city.”
When Police Benevolent Association chief Patrick Lynch said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has the blood of two dead cops on his hands, he was issuing a physical threat to both the person of the mayor and the civil authority to which the police are subordinate and sworn to protect. In a nation under the rule of law, such a statement by a representative of an armed and enflamed constabulary – 35,000-strong, the equivalent of three light infantry divisions – would trigger an immediate defensive response from the State, to guard against mutiny. But, of course, no such thing happened.
When Lynch’s PBA declared, in a prepared statement, that “we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department” and “will act accordingly,” that constituted an instruction to union members to impose a martial law-type policing regime on the city – with no authorization other than the weapons they carry. Sounds very much like a coup.
On Internet message boards, police union activists instructed the rank and file to refuse to respond to incidents unless two units were dispatched to the scene, and to double up even if given orders to the contrary. Under this “wartime” footing, the police would simply seize the power to deploy and assign themselves, as they liked – and to hell with the chain of command and civilian authorities.
To hell, especially, with Mayor de Blasio, who now travels nowhere except under the protective custody of police commissioner Bill Bratton, a “cop’s cop” and architect of the “Broken Windows” policing strategy that begat stop-and-frisk. Bratton translates de Blasio’s words into cop-speak, and has forged a tense truce between the uniformed legions and the man who won 95 percent of the Black vote on the promise to put a leash on the gendarmes.
There is no doubt the cops feel betrayed – a rage that has been building in synch with the growth of a nationwide movement that challenges the legitimacy of the Mass Black Incarceration State, of which they are the frontline troops, the “heroes” in the war to criminalize and contain an entire people. The chants and placards are an insult and an indictment of THEM, and of their centrality to the racist project that has been an organizing principle of the nation for more than two generations. How is it that cops can be compelled to “protect and serve” marchers whose purpose is anathema to the American policing mission: to beat down, lock up, and extrajudicially execute dissident, disorderly, uppity or merely inconvenient Black people?
The cops understand the law, and that the law is conditional, based on place, race and wealth, and that in the end there is only force, the use of which is their sacred monopoly. It’s what gives them a status that union paychecks cannot buy; what makes blue collar guys and gals “somebody” in society. Most of all, they know who is nobody: the beatable, friskable, disposable, killable folks who would be prey on any other day, but have lately been allowed to repeatedly parade down the most protected streets of the richest island in the country, screaming defamations.
“The cops’ rage has been building in synch with the growth of a nationwide movement that challenges the legitimacy of the Mass Black Incarceration State, of which they are the frontline troops.”
The cops are understandably angry and confused. As primary enforcers of the social order, they have an intimate knowledge of actual class and race relationships in America. Their perspectives are molded by the geographic and social boundaries they patrol; they are shaped and informed by the inequalities of the system they protect on behalf of the powerful people they serve. (Yes, they really do “serve and protect” somebody.) The cops’ worldview is also firmly anchored in the history of the United States. He may not be aware of his profession’s antecedents in the slave patrols, or even that the U.S. Supreme Court once ruled that Black people have no rights that the white man is bound to respect, but cops are the reigning experts on the borders that delineate rights and privileges in their localities. They know that public housing residents have virtually no rights that cops – as agents of the rulers – are bound to respect. They know that whole sections of their cities, encompassing most of the Black and brown populations, are designated as drug zones where everyone is suspect and probable cause is a given, or as high-crime zones where every shooting is pre-qualified as a good one.
These are the Constitution-free zones, full of people who get and deserve no protection by or from the police. The very existence of Constitution-free zones means that the Bill of Rights is not the law of the land, but a Potemkin façade, a con game, a chimera – and no one knows this better than the cops, whose job is to ensure, as best they can, that everyone stays within their designated space.
For about a million Black people, the assigned “space” is prison. The Mass Black Incarceration State is the edifice that defines the American system of justice, setting it apart from the rest of the world in size, racial selectivity, draconian sentencing and institutionalized torture (80,000 inmates in solitary confinement on any given day). The police are the drones that feed the infernal prison machine, and keep Black America in a state of rightlessness. As Shakespeare’s mercenary warrior Othello would put it: We “have done the state some service, and they know it.”
“New York City’s police force is especially prone to mutiny and coup-plotting.”
The cops threaten mutiny if the State does not stick up for the men and women who do its dirty work. PBA honcho Patrick Lynch denounced “those that incited violence on the street under the guise of protests that tried to tear down what New York City police officers did everyday. We tried to warn, ‘It must not go on. It cannot be tolerated.’”
To which the protesters answer: the police killings and the criminalization of a whole people must not go on and cannot be tolerated.
The movement has come to a critical juncture, a moment that would have arrived even if Ismaaiyl Brinsley had not made his own fatal decision. It was always inevitable that the cops would at some point demand that the State dispense with civil liberties pretenses and allow them to crush the nascent movement. New York City’s police force – by far the nation’s largest army of domestic occupation – is especially prone to mutiny and coup-plotting. Thousands of cops, many of them drunk, stormed City Hall in 1992 to express their utter contempt for Black mayor David Dinkins.
But, the current crisis is far different, because it is the movement’s show, not the cops’. The people are exposing the most acute contradictions of American life through direct confrontation with the armed enforcers of the State. The cops are supposed to be upset. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained, “the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” The crisis is here, and will grow deeper, but freedom is non-negotiable. The movement must win or be crushed.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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The Police Aren’t Under Attack. Institutionalized Racism Is.
BY KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
According to Ecclesiastes, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose.” For me, today, that means a time to seek justice and a time to mourn the dead.
And a time to shut the hell up.
The recent brutal murder of two Brooklyn police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, is a national tragedy that should inspire nationwide mourning. Both my grandfather and father were police officers, so I appreciate what a difficult and dangerous profession law enforcement is. We need to value and celebrate the many officers dedicated to protecting the public and nourishing our justice system. It’s a job most of us don’t have the courage to do.
At the same time, however, we need to understand that their deaths are in no way related to the massive protests against systemic abuses of the justice system as symbolized by the recent deaths — also national tragedies — of Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, and Michael Brown. Ismaaiyl Brinsley, the suicidal killer, wasn’t an impassioned activist expressing political frustration, he was a troubled man who had shot his girlfriend earlier that same day. He even Instagrammed warnings of his violent intentions. None of this is the behavior of a sane man or rational activist. The protests are no more to blame for his actions than The Catcher in the Rye was for the murder of John Lennon or the movie Taxi Driver for the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Crazy has its own twisted logic and it is in no way related to the rational cause-and-effect world the rest of us attempt to create.
Those who are trying to connect the murders of the officers with the thousands of articulate and peaceful protestors across America are being deliberately misleading in a cynical and selfish effort to turn public sentiment against the protestors. This is the same strategy used when trying to lump in the violence and looting with the legitimate protestors, who have disavowed that behavior. They hope to misdirect public attention and emotion in order to stop the protests and the progressive changes that have already resulted. Shaming and blaming is a lot easier than addressing legitimate claims.
Some police unions are especially heinous perpetrators. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s previous public support of protestors has created friction with these unions. The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association responded with a petition asking that the mayor not attend the funerals of officers killed in the line of duty. Following the murders of Ramos and Liu, an account appearing to represent the Sergeants Benevolent Association tweeted: “The blood of 2 executed police officers is on the hands of Mayor de Blasio.” Former New York governor George Pataki tweeted: “Sickened by these barbaric acts, which sadly are a predictable outcome of divisive anti-cop rhetoric of #ericholder and #mayordeblasio. #NYPD.”
This phony and logically baffling indignation is similar to that expressed by the St. Louis County Police Association when it demanded an apology from the NFL when several Rams players entered the field with their hands held high in the iconic Michael Brown gesture of surrender. Or when LeBron James and W.R. Allen wore his “I Can’t Breathe” shirts echoing Eric Garner’s final plea before dying. Such outrage by police unions and politicians implies that there is no problem, which is the erroneous perception that the protestors are trying to change.
This shrill cry of “policism” (a form of reverse racism) by Pataki and the police unions is a hollow and false whine born of financial self-interest (unions) or party politics (Republican Pataki besmirching Democrat de Blasio) rather than social justice. These tragic murders now become a bargaining chip in whatever contract negotiations or political aspirations they have.
What prompted a mentally unstable man to shoot two officers? Protestors? The mayor? Or the unjust killings of unarmed black men? Probably none of them. He was a ticking bomb that anything might have set off. What’s most likely to prevent future incidents like this? Stopping the protests which had sparked real and positive changes through a national dialogue? Changes that can only increase faith in and respect for the police? No, because the killer was mentally unfit. Most likely protecting the police from future incidents will come from better mental health care to identify, treat, and monitor violent persons. Where are those impassioned tweets demanding that?
In a Dec. 21, 2014 article about the shooting, the Los Angeles Times referred to the New York City protests as “anti-police marches,” which is grossly inaccurate and illustrates the problem of perception the protestors are battling. The marches are meant to raise awareness of double standards, lack of adequate police candidate screening, and insufficient training that have resulted in unnecessary killings. Police are not under attack, institutionalized racism is. Trying to remove sexually abusive priests is not an attack on Catholicism, nor is removing ineffective teachers an attack on education. Bad apples, bad training, and bad officials who blindly protect them, are the enemy. And any institution worth saving should want to eliminate them, too.
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose.” This is the season and time when we should be resolved to continue seeking justice together and not let those with blind biases distract, diminish, or divide us. The way to honor those who defend our liberties with their lives — as did my father and grandfather — is not to curtail liberty, but to exercise it fully in pursuit of a just and peaceful society.
Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time NBA champion and league Most Valuable Player. He is also a celebrated author, filmmaker and education ambassador.
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Taking the Initiative Back For the Movement After the Brinsley Killings
BY BRUCE A. DIXON
BAR Managing Editor
For brutal wannabe fascists like police union thugs, for liberal authoritarian politicians like President Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus and most big city mayors, for media talking head like CNN’s Don Lemon, and for weaseling civil rights spokesleaders eager to throw shade on grassroots movements that make them irrelevant, the December 20 killings of two NYPD officers were a gift from heaven, or whatever place their gifts come from.
The killings let cop thugs across the country, usually Republicans flip the script to masquerade as injured victims living in fear for their lives, howling (or oinking) at the media for covering their crimes and citizen outrage at all. The fascist cops also single out authoritarian liberal politicians for even pretending to listen to the protests, and for not unleashing them even further.
The killings gave prevaricating politicians from the president on down to city halls across the land the excuse to double down on their authoritarian credentials, repeating once again the Big Lie that cops are in unique and daily danger, despite the fact as Johanna Fernandez points out, elsewhere in this week’s Black Agenda Report, that cop killings are at a 50 year low at the same time police killings of civilians are at an all time high.
The killings allowed corporate media to stop covering the nationwide protests against police crimes, and deliver us instead more cops pretending to be victims, more public officials posturing in favor of whatever cops want to do, and orchestrated demands that protesters outdo each other in mourning the slain police and again and again renounce any thought of breaking the state’s monopoly on violence, even in self-defense.
Zombie-like civil rights spokesleaders, ever attentive to their masters’ needs, directly link the killings to the protest movement in their own way by calling in some cases for suspension of protests, and bringing forth the kin of police victims to join in public mourning for the slain officers, as though some kind of tit-for-tat world exists in which cops, prosecutors and officials publicly mourn civilian deaths at the hands of police. …
… The movement has to get beyond the failed liberal authoritarian responses of “more black officers,” “more community policing” and “more training for cops.” Nobody spends more on training than big city departments like Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Training hasn’t stopped the killing and police terror, and neither has hiring more black and brown cops. As for community policing, the shorts-wearing Officer Friendly on a bicycle is just a radio call away from the SWAT team in the amphibious mine-resistant armored vehicle. …
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Fox station edited video of Eric Garner protesters to make it sound like they were chanting ‘kill a cop’
by LAMIAT SABIN
Fox has apologised after editing a video of protesters to make it sound as if they were chanting “kill a cop” during a demonstration over a grand jury decision not to charge the police officer who put Eric Garner in an illegal chokehold.
Protesters, led by Tawanda Jones, took to the streets of Washington DC earlier this month to campaign against the Grand Jury decision. The father-of-six died shortly after after insisting “I can’t breathe”.
In the unedited footage, people could be heard chanting “we won’t stop, we can’t stop, until killer cops are in cell blocks.”
However, in the version altered by Fox and broadcast by the Baltimore-based affiliated channel Fox45, the chanting was cut down to wrongly portray Ms. Jones and others as having said “we won’t stop, we can’t stop, so kill a cop.”
The real footage, that was broadcast on C-Span, backs Ms. Jones’ claim that Fox misrepresented her and the other protesters to cast the event in a negative light.
Ms. Jones, sister of Tyrone West who died in police custody in July last year, yesterday appeared in a tearful interview with the channel after she complained about their false representation of the protest and the tarnishing of her reputation while she fought for justice of those who have died in similar circumstances of corruption.
She said: “What really gets to me is where you edited it and stopped. Like, how could that be a mistake?”
The blunder made by Fox45 follows the death of two NYPD police officers, Rafael Ramos and Liu Wenjin, who were shot dead by gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley while sitting in a police patrol car on Saturday afternoon.
“My community needs the cops. Nobody deserves to be brutally murdered, so that hurt me,” Ms Jones continued in explaining that the real version of the chant actually meant that she believes everyone should be held accountable for their actions.
Ms Jones said that she complained to Fox after her ex-partner, a police officer himself, had alerted her to the gross misrepresentation that was being shown across the US and also worldwide.
She is one of the many people who protest every week on what is dubbed as “West Wednesday” to campaign along the east coast of the country against the circumstances in which her brother died and also for other victims including Anthony Anderson and Michael Brown.
“You say you were misrepresented in that video, and you were, we apologise for it,” said the Fox interviewer.
After the apology, she said that the misreporting of the story had made her too afraid to go out in public.
She said: “I still don’t feel safe because the message is still out there. I don’t break the law, I live by the law, I’m a school teacher and I’m a mother and I fight for justice for the right cause.”
“I feel like I was murdered all over again. A piece of me died when my brother was brutally murdered.
“You guys just killed a little piece of me because I never thought my name would be in a negative light,” she added.
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Where’s the Outrage Now? Statement of Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration in Response to Shooting Death of Two NYC Police Officers
In response to the shooting deaths of two New York City police officers, Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration, along with many other organizations, was asked by community leaders to release a statement of condolence — and to distance our organization from the shooting. “Where’s the outrage now?” was heard from police officers; and community leaders have suggested it is our obligation to clarify our position.
We may be missing something, but as far as we know, no condolences have been expressed by police forces, PBA’s, or FOP’s on the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and the many other police killing victims; nor have they distanced themselves from Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo.
There are many heartbreaking and unnecessary deaths in our world every day, from many causes, from inadequate health care to pollution to poverty to drone attacks. We regret them all, we are outraged by them all; but we have never before been asked to issue a statement of condolence.
CAAMI, #BlackLivesMatter, and the movement we are part of were created to respond to a particular kind of unnecessary death — the systematic killing and brutality directed toward youth of color by police with the approval of the criminal justice system.
There is no parallel between the deaths of these officers and the deaths we are protesting, of youth of color at the hands of police. The death of the officers was the act of a lone individual. The deaths we are protesting are institutionalized, systemic, official, continuing, and approved by criminal justice officialdom, the courts, and every level of government.
The job of policing is inherently dangerous, and made more so by the antagonistic, us-versus-them approach taken by police, especially white police in communities of color. We are told it is only “some” police officers, that the majority are professional and fair. This will only be true if and when the “some” are held accountable rather than protected by an entire system of power. We sincerely believe that a system of equal justice, transparency, community control and accountability will make the job of police officers much safer — as well as make our communities safer and our youth less likely to be gunned down.
In addition, the call for us to respond with sympathy implies that our movement has some responsibility for these deaths, or that we have called for revenge. The opposite is true. The system of violent policing and mass incarceration is a system based on punishment and revenge — the system we are trying to overturn. It is exactly because violence and punishment, coming from the most powerful forces in our society, beget more violence as well as untold suffering in our communities and around the world, that we oppose them. An eye for an eye is not coming from us, but is the dominant culture of our racist, hierarchical, violent, punitive society. A society’s dominant culture comes from its dominant forces — in this case, its government, oligarchy (the 1%), corporations, police, military, media, and other entrenched institutions, not from the people on the ground and in the street.
Capital Area Against Mass Incarceration extends condolences to the families of New York City police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. We regret all violent and unnecessary deaths; and we continue to assert that dismantling the racist, violent, and oppressive criminal justice system is a crucial step in preventing them.
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Emails and Racist Chats Show How Cops and GOP Are Teaming Up to Undermine de Blasio
by MAX BLUMENTHAL
Threats seem to expose a political plot against the NYC mayor and the BlackLivesMatter movement.
December 29, 2014
When hundreds of cops from around the country and as far away as Canada turned their backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio during the funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos, the NYPD officer shot to death alongside his partner Wenjian Liu by a deranged gunman, they fired the first salvo in a carefully coordinated political operation aimed at discrediting the liberal mayor and shattering the ongoing anti-police brutality protest movement.
AlterNet has obtained emails revealing plans to organize a series of anti-de Blasio protests around the city until the summer of 2015. Billed as a non-partisan movement in support of “the men and women of the NYPD,” the protests are being orchestrated by a cast of NYPD union bosses and local Republican activists allied with Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor who recently called on de Blasio to “say you’re sorry to [NYPD officers] for having created a false impression of them.” The first rally is planned to take place at Queens Borough Hall at noon on January 13.
Joe Concannon, a failed Republican State Senate candidate and current president of the Tea Party-aligned Queens Village Republican Club, is the main organizer of the burgeoning anti-de Blasio protest effort. The retired NYPD captain and former Giuliani advisor is a close ally of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch. Lynch generated national headlines — and cheers from rank and file cops — when he claimed that de Blasio “has blood on [his] hands” just hours after Ismaaiyl Brinsley murdered Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
In an email exchange with a supporter, Concannon said he and his allies had filed papers to found a non-profit to fund the anti-de Blasio campaign. The January 13 Queens demonstration would be among the largest, according to Concannon. Major rallies in March in Breezy Point, Queens and at City Hall were also in the works, he said.
In a separate email dated December 26 and titled, “Support Your Police rallies,” Concannon declared the onset of a campaign he dubbed Operation All Out. “Everyone MUST get out and support these fine men and women,” he implored several NYPD associates.
Jack Coughlin, the treasurer of the NYPD Superior Officers Association, responded by proposing “a rally held in Breezy Point in March when the weather will be better [that] could attract thousands of pro-cop supporters to counter the professional anti-cop organizers.” Coughlin went on to urge Concannon to pressure Republican representatives Peter King and Lee Zeldin and NY GOP State Chairman Ed Cox to “get the House Homeland Committee to hold public hearings on who’s financing Al Sharpton’s anti-cop protest.”
National Police Defense Foundation executive director Joseph Occhipinti chimed in to offer help in coordinating the demonstrations. “I would suggest that everything go through the [Patrick Lynch’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association] for any organized protests,” he added. A former agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Occhipinti was convicted in 1991 of conducting illegal searches and narrowly escaped jail time for allegedly stealing $16,000 from his victims. When the US attorney who secured his conviction, Jeh Johnson, was appointed by Obama to direct the Department of Homeland Security last year, Occhipinti rushed to the right-wing writer Charles C. Johnson to complain.
The anger coursing through the ranks of the NYPD is driving union bosses like Lynch to ratchet up their rhetoric against the mayor. Lynch is up for election soon and seems desperate to channel the resentment of his constituents. Meanwhile, Republican operatives see a chance to do fatal damage to a rising Democratic star and close Clinton ally by resurrecting the kind of racial backlash politics that won them urban white votes during the Nixon era.
Not since the early 1970s, when liberal mayor John Lindsay presided over a politically chaotic and crime-ridden New York, has a mayor been so reviled by the NYPD. With an African-American wife with a history of liberal activism and a biracial son who played a pivotal role in his campaign for mayor, de Blasio has become, at least for some cops, a symbol of everything they despise about the city they patrol. On a semi-private chat forum, they regularly hold forth with racist tirades against him and his family.
NYPD Officers, In Their Own Words
On Thee Rant, a popular chat site known to be an online watercooler for active duty and retired NYPD officers, commenters fret about possible ambushes by black gang members, obsess over radical leftists, organize boycotts of chain stores they deem “anti-cop,” and hatch plots to target protest leaders. While the forum attracts a disproportionate number of cops with a proclivity for outrageous hyperventilation, it also offers a rare look at the unvarnished views of the retired police activists and old guard officers mobilizing against the mayor.
As veteran NYPD observer Len Levitt wrote of the forum, officers “are often so constricted by the department that Thee Rant is often their only outlet. That’s good, until it isn’t.”
In comment threads, de Blasio is routinely referred to as “Kaiser Wilhelm,” a derisive reference to his birth name, Warren Wilhelm Jr. Police resentment of de Blasio has simmered since his campaign for mayor, when he ran against Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policies. The anti-de Blasio sentiment grew during the early months of his term, as he wrangled with the Policemen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) over police salaries and dropped a Bloomberg appeal of a federal lawsuit that found NYPD officers unfairly targeted people of color with stop-and-frisk tactics.
But nothing fueled NYPD outrage like de Blasio’s relationship with Al Sharpton. When the mayor hired a former Sharpton aide, Rachel Noerdlinger, as the chief of staff to his wife, Chirlane McCray, then defended Noerdlinger against a torrent of bad press for her relationship with an ex-convict and her son’s Facebook postings referring to cops as “pigs,” NYPD anger exploded.
On a Thee Rant forum, commenters homed in on Noerdlinger’s race (she is black) and her gender. While one commenter described her as “a weed soaked cum dumpster low life POS,” another officer wrote of her and her partner: “The bit-ch will be bugging mofo’s ass, if she hasn’t done so already, about making nigge-r noise in court and he will begin clobbering her, and then junior will jump in and snap his neck!”
“They’re born N I _ _ E R S , live like N I _ _ E R S and usually die like N I _ _ E R S,” a police commenter added. His language was typical of commentary appearing on the forum whenever Noerdlinger’s name was mentioned.
When de Blasio remarked this month that he had instructed his son, Dante, to use extra caution when engaging with cops, Thee Rant commenters lit up the chat boards. In a typically lurid thread, a Thee Rant commenter made light of the struggle de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, has waged with substance abuse. “Somebody should slip her a ‘hot bag,'” a fellow officer who called himself Thisroundsoneme replied, suggesting a cop plant drugs on her to frame her for possession.
A Staten Island grand jury’s refusal to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo for strangling Eric Garner to death was not only a cause for celebration at Thee Rant, but an excuse for a new wave of racist tirades. “F u c k Black America, their equal or worse than whites, when speaking of Racism” wrote Eddie R, a forum commenter. “F u c k Diversity, it’s not working and never will work”
“The latinos are about 24 percent of the population as opposed to the 13 percent that negroes comprise. Perhaps that is why our ‘brethren of color’ are using any excuse to act up,” another NYPD commenter added.
When the killing of Ramos and Liu was first reported, Thee Rant commenters leapt to blame de Blasio, and for the first time, focused their loathing on Bratton. “Allowing these savage animals to get away with the SHYT they are is the reason this happened. The blood is on your hands Mr Mayor and You Police Commissioner Bratton,” a forum member declared, foreshadowing remarks by the PBA’s Lynch.
NYPD Commissioner Bratton has emerged in recent weeks as a hate figure on Thee Rant forums. The angry cops have dubbed him “Beansy,” mocking his thick Boston accent and deriding him as a hyper-ambitious, imperious technocrat who has served as a political stage prop for the liberal de Blasio. While one forum commenter called for a PBA vote of no confidence for both de Blasio and Bratton, another waxed nostalgic for Ray Kelly, the former commissioner whose legacy was defined by his defense of stop-and-frisk. “The difference between Kelly and Bratton is Kelly, for better or for worse ran the Department while Bratton holds DeBlasio’s coat,” a commenter who called himself Petefio wrote.
As the demonstrations against police brutality spread, some Thee Rant commenters vowed to target protest organizers like Jose LaSalle, an activist with Copwatch who documents police abuses in the Bronx. “Jose hates white people!” wrote a commenter who identified himself as a former member of the NYPD and went by the handle, Retirednutjob. “What a shock! Why don’t he go back to Puerto Rico? Go harass the Police down there Jose and see what happens!”
The ex-cop went on to post what he said was LaSalle’s home phone number and suggested a campaign to force him out of his job with the New York City Parks Department. “Come on we are a powerful force of retired investigators and private eyes and various other sources, lets start following and watching these !%@% stirrers it cant be that hard to find dirt and discredit these azzholes,” Baysidedet clamored.
From #TurnYourBack to Operation All Out
At the Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn where Ramos and Liu were pronounced dead on December 20, the PBA and Sergeants Benevolent Association received word that de Blasio was on his way. It was the police union bosses’ chance to embrace the raw rage of the beat cops they represented. When the mayor arrived, proceeding down a long hallway past a line of officers, the cops turned their backs to him in a show of total contempt.
“That blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall in the office of the mayor,” the PBA’s Lynch proclaimed afterwards. “When these funerals are over, those responsible will be called on the carpet and held accountable.”
The following day, actor James Woods seized on the protest to popularize a hashtag on Twitter: #TurnYourBack. Woods’ first tweet, published just hours after the spontaneous protest took place, has been retweeted more than 2500 times.
Woods is one of the Tea Party right’s favorite celebrities and happens to be a friend and golfing partner of Rudy Giuliani. In fact, Woods played the former NYC mayor in the forgotten post-9/11 biopic, Rudy. “I fought tooth and nail to portray him as the genuine hero that I unequivocally believe him to be,” Woods said at the time.
With help from Woods and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Fox News Channel, where Giuliani blamed the Mayor for “bringing [police protests] on himself,” the NYPD’s war on de Blasio became a flashpoint for the national partisan battle. The stage was set for an epic rebuke of de Blasio.
Nearly 700 cops from around the country and Canada descended on New York City for the December 27 funeral of the murdered officer Rafael Ramos, taking advantage of an offer from Jet Blue of free flights to the memorial. Among those represented at the ceremony were members of the Albuquerque Police Department, a scandal-stained force with the highest rate of shootings of unarmed civilians in the country.
As soon as de Blasio appeared on a large screen monitor positioned outside the church where the funeral took place, cops who may never have heard the mayor’s name responded to the cue to turn their backs. “100% including Volunteer FD guys from Long Island and Cops from everywhere from Canadian Mounties to San Diego and San Francisco, and everywhere in between [turned their backs],” recalled Thee Rant member Thisroundsonme. “Even civilians in the rear behind the detail turned their backs as word spread as to what was going on.”
Another cop put the protest in perspective: “This was a show of solidarity for the Police nationwide. Cops everywhere are under attack by the public they protect, and the politicians who should be supporting their Police are derelict in their duties… And this is what you get.”
Officer Liu’s funeral on January 3 will present police with one more opportunity to admonish de Blasio. Then Operation All Out begins, with Republican operatives hoping to ride out of the political wilderness on the rising tide of cop rage. In an email to a supporter, Queens Village Republican Club president Joe Concannon referred to the planned wave of protests as “our plan to keep it in the news for the first half of 2015.”
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Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath and Republican Gomorrah. Find him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.