community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
A Lesson From Mitchell Crooks
by mking
Thursday, Dec. 25, 2003 at 2:19 PM
mking_usa@yahoo.com
Thank you Mitch for your deep insight.
A few weeks back a horrible incident took place in Cincy. A stoned black male assulted two white police officers and in the end the black male died while being taken into custody by police. After the attack a debate began over the incident and a "gentleman" by the name of Mitchell Crooks jumped into the debate. Mitch is most famous for videotaping the assult of a 16 year old boy at the hands of an LAPD officer that made national headlines. During this recent debate a few people did some homework on Mitchell and discovered among other questionable things that Mitch has actually been making a profit off this video. The money did not go to a charity or to the boy who was abused but into Mitchell's pocket. I chose to question Mitch on this subject a number of times and never received much of a response until now. I wanted to share with everyone this deep, insightful, fact laced, pointing out where I was wrong, respectful, well written response to my questions I posted on CIMC. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mitchell Crooks leader of freecrooks.com and self proclaimed leader of the anti-police movement:
"You are truly a dipshit motherfucker. You think I made money off that
tape?
Well I guess you will be really dissapointed to know I am a dj and
support
myself by selling x to your mindless kids you dipshit cockmaster. You
cop
lovin peice of shit assholes are full of stupid lame excuses. I hope
one day
a relative or your kids gets shot and killed by a police officer and
THEN
you might wake up and quit living in that DREAM World you have created
in
your mind. I make a living just the way I want you prick and to tell
you the
truth fuckface, It's all for social justice and I am having a fuckin
blast.
You are the minority. Just cause you troll indymedia and post your
fucked up
right wing nonsense, does not make you some kind of expert on how
people
should be you miserable fuckin retard. You are pissed because your
"control" is no more. You ain't done shit for nobody and you are
jealous.
People are waking up to the police violence committed by pigs in
uniform you
miserable fuckin loser. Your losing the battle on all fronts dickwad.
You
will not like the america to come cause your old and fuckin dying. WE
are
young and in OUR lifetime cops will answer to the people and do what we
tell
them. I am glad I did my part you fuckin sleaze.
Sincerely mitchell crooks
PEACE OUT
Mitchell Crooks
SITES:
http://www.freecrooks.com/
http://votetoimpeach.org/
IMPEACH THA SON OF A BUSCH!"
Wow. Thank you for enlightening me Mr. Crooks. Even though I am not conservative and I am probably younger than you, damn, you sure did teach me a thing or two about yourself, your cause, and your organization. I now fully understand your plight. People like my friend Michaelis and the people at Social Nerve, Kleveland.org, and here on Cleveland IMC who are passionate about this issue should take lessons from you on how to debate this issue clearly, thoughtfully, and respectfully. Now thanks to this insightful email people like myself, Concerned Citizen, Average Joe, Jennifer, Dana, and others have learned we are no match for your educated and deep responses to our questioning of you and your methods. All of us thank you for this wonderful Christmas gift.
Mking
This motherfucker mking is crazy!
by mitchell crooks
Sunday, Dec. 28, 2003 at 5:03 AM
M_king also sends threatening letters to my attorneys and has had a feild day plugging my website. He sends me threatning letters that are filled with powder in them. This guy is a psycho fuckin loser.
Again, thanks for the plug dipshit.
he is doing your work for you.
by hip pop
Sunday, Dec. 28, 2003 at 6:00 AM
I think if you really want to get after mitchell start a "I love police brutality website" or something Mking. Geez, you are a little weird for wasting bandwith on indymedia over this. You come off like a real idiot. Do something better with your time than attack a guy who stood up for somethin that is a problem. You have problems.
Too Funny Mitchell
by mking
Sunday, Dec. 28, 2003 at 11:29 PM
mking_usa@yahoo.com
Funny how on Cleveland IMC this same picture was posted by someone claiming NOT to be Mitchell Crooks making the same accusations. Also funny how I received an email from Mitch where he brags about having my IP. It is also funny how the anti-cop crusader has supposedly turned me over to the cops. Irony anyone? The truth is I never threatened Mitch, I have no reason to, and I have no clue who his lawyer is. Keep up the lies Mitch, even Bill Clinton got caught eventually.
police brutality on trial in CA
by mitchell crooks
Monday, Dec. 29, 2003 at 8:13 PM
I don't read Mkings posts no such thing as bad publicity Mking is a psycho stalker liar
Police brutality on trial in inglewood california.
Jeremy Morse who was videotaped beating a defenseless, handcuffed, mentally disabled, 16 year old child over his fathers unregistered tags is due back in court. Jury selection for this case begins jan. 5th 2004. Jeremy Morse was found basically guilty 7 to 5 in an all white neighborhood courthouse. The trial has been moved to inglewood where the crime was actually committed. Inglewood is 45% black & 45% latino.
Jeremy Morse learned nothing from his time in the spotlight. He was arrested for drunk driving over the thanksgiving holiday. Police reports say that he was possibly under the influence of drugs. He is due back in court for that charge jan. 20 2004. He has no legal defense for that case.
The videographer of the beating mitchell crooks was arrested for a five year old warrant for a dui & petty theft one week after because he refused to cooperate with the corrupt los angeles DA steve cooley. This is the focal point case against police brutality. With nationwide an worldwide coverage. LADA Steve Cooley has alot of hatred towards him over the intimidation of witnesses in this case. Cooley was attacked by the LA city coucil for arresting mitchell crooks and giving "LA a pretty bad name". Several key politicians have come to the aid of the videographer. Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson, Medea Benjamin, Peter Camejo, LA mayor jim Hahn, city council members antonio villagrosa, eric garcetti and former LAPD cheif bernard parks. Several celebrities as well, keifer sutherland, Ice cube, martin sheen, several famous dj's , eminem and ludacris. As well as several community activists, najee ali, minister farakahn, minister tony of nation of islam, dick gregory, dr. earl ofari hutchinson, Ron Kovic, Tom Hayden to name a few. Mitchell has used this time in the spotlight to improve his life and take on the issue of police brutality with these people's support. He has changed his life around unlike the brutal cop jeremy morse who also beat up several people before mitchell was brave enough to catch him in the act again, putting one guy in a coma for a week, another woman was beat while 6 months pregnant.
Steve Cooley is trying this case that many have compared to the rodney king case. Here are a couple of the issues Steve Cooley has blown intentionally. DA's work with police and refuse to ever convict them of crimes no matter how bad they are.
Downey police murdered Gonzalo Martinez, the 26 year old son of Argentinean immigrants in February 2002. His death, also captured on videotape, which was caught on police dashboard cameras (never released to public)as well as an amateur videographer who has since been paid off by cooley (or someone) to vanish off the face of the earth. Thereby killing the public outrage over the videotaped killing by M5 machine guns over a DUI stop.This has many parallels to the case of Donovan Jackson. Cooley declined to file charges against the officers in Gonzalo's death in spite of video evidence showing police executed Gonzalo in cold-blood.
22 year old Javier Quezada, Jr. was shot to death by a Pasadena police
officer in front of his mother and father on January 23, 2003. He had a pair of scissors in his hand. The officer asked no questions and just fired at Quezada in front of his parents. And then, Steve Cooley and his investigators never even spoke to Javiers folks before the district attorney announced that no charges would be filed against the brutal cop who killed their son.
Steve cooley also closed the books on 9,000 or more cases involving the famous LAPD rampart investigation of cops that set up people to control the drug ring, Tupac's and biggie smalls murder.
The recent killing of a black man by "out of control rogue cops" in Cincinnati has brought the worlds eyes closer to the issue of corrupt organized gangland violence and terror going on by american law enforcement. Many are questioning if the police in america are the true terrorists? The cops themselves must follow the LAW. Under john ashcroft, and the bush administrations attack on civil rights, Anti war movements/protests and those that dare use their right to dissent, citizens have been killed, beaten, harassed and attacked. Police are NOT JUDGE, JURY & EXECUTIONERS. Sometimes it is necessary to "subdue" a subject but, not to jab him several times in his heart with the point of your baton ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect.
Some Chickenhawks like to argue in favor of police brutality by condemning the videographer of the donovan jackson case. They point out lies and hatred towards the good deed he has done for humanity. So to those who stalk mitchell and think that pointing out his wrongdoings will take away from the issue of police brutality, It won't.
To find out more about the donovan jackson police brutality issueand to watch the unedited video,
click the link below
What Investigation?
by mking
Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2003 at 9:49 PM
mking_usa@yahoo.com
Mitchell claims I am being investigated by his own people as well as the IMC. I decided to contact some members of the IMC and was not surprised to see Mitchell was once again lying when I received my first response.
From a C-imcista:
"Hello Mking
>
> Second, are you involved in sometime type of
> investigation of me?
NO!!!!
I was unaware it was hidden. Perhas another C-Imcista
could answer that.
Nothing has been sent to C-IMC list, and no discussion
regarding an investigation .
Try to take a deep breath. I would like to help you
the best I can With your situation. Let me know If i
can do anything for you :)
Take care."
The hole keeps getting deeper and deeper doesn't it Mitchell?
mking is not my friend
by nobody is saying he is anti cop
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 5:27 AM
mkingIS@propolicebrutality Quit making a case psycho mkinghastakenthisissuealittletoomuch
Mking is a psycho who follows my posts around cause he thinks police brutality is a good thing. He has sent threatening emails demanding I quit or suffer the wrath of him. He sends mail (I assume? The addresses match) to my attorneys that are threatening and has taken the issue of me protesting police brutality and has (somehow) turned it into "IHATE ALL COPS". If mking did a little investigating he would know that at several points I have even stated I don't think all cops are bad. Several times I have said this. National TV, my website and several documentary's. This guy is such a psychopath he combs the net for my articles just to mention how much he gets off seeing COPS beat the shit out of people. Just ignore this freak. Mking does not realize that the people who matter to me see "right" thru his bullshit. He is making an ass of himself and IS under investigation for the threats to my attorneys coming from his region. You need help pro terror liar, Mking.
Now watch him pick apart my entire paragraph.
Come visit my website:
Uh I think Mking is a little obsessed.
by USCkid
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 1:53 PM
Inglewood � �It seemed to be a clear-cut case of police brutality. Officer Jeremy Morse was videotaped slamming young Donovan Jackson�s head onto the trunk of a police car and punching him in the face,� exclaimed Congresswoman Maxine Waters when she learned that Morse�s trial had ended in a hung jury, split 7-5 in favor of conviction. Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said he would seek a new trial.
�It is impossible for me to understand why the videotape was not accepted as fact by the jury. This verdict appears to once again show preference to law enforcement officers who misuse their authority and betray the citizens they are sworn to protect and to serve,� said Congresswoman Waters.
The jury included only one Black, a young man ordered back onto the panel by the judge after lawyers for the police officers had rejected all the other Blacks in the jury pool. The case had been transferred from a courthouse in Inglewood, where the crime occurred, to an isolated courthouse near LA airport.
�Jeremy Morse is a coward,� declared Mitchell Crooks, the young man who videotaped the beating, shared the tape with the media and then was summarily whisked off to jail for a previous offense. �Only a coward would punch a child in handcuffs!�
It was Mitchell Crooks� videotape, seen by millions around the world, that convicted Morse in the court of public opinion. Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope told the press as a tense crowd awaited the jury verdict, �If Mitchell had uncovered a terrorist plot, he would be a hero. He was put in jail because he uncovered police brutality and racial profiling.�
Though Crooks saw the entire incident and videotaped most of it, he was not called as a witness at Morse�s trial. �They did not ask me to testify. They did not ask any of the 20 people on my video to testify. They did not ask any of the people Morse and Darvish beat up before Donovan Jackson to testify,� said Crooks.
One victim of Morse and his partner, Bijan Darvish, had been beaten into a coma and was still in the hospital when the officers brutalized Donovan Jackson. �They almost beat me to death,� said that victim, Neilson Williams. Nothing about the brutal history of Morse or Darvish was presented to the jury.
Most of the key witnesses were law enforcement officers. One civilian witness testified in favor of the cops - a white tourist from New Zealand who was flown halfway around the world and put up at an airport hotel in exchange for his testimony.
Young Donovan Jackson testified that he had not felt the blows from Officer Morse. Jackson said he was �not awake� at the time. When he regained consciousness, Morse threatened to break his nose. �Did he say anything else?� asked the prosecutor. Donovan told the jury, �He said it�s his world.�
�It is little wonder why so many young people have so little trust in officers of the law,� observed Congresswoman Waters. �It is little wonder these young people live in fear they can and will be brutalized by police officers who need not be concerned about being held accountable for their actions.�
Donovan Jackson and his father, Coby Chavis, have state and federal civil rights lawsuits pending against the officers, the city and Los Angeles County. �We are hopeful that this next time around, justice will be served and we in the meantime will proceed vigorously with the civil lawsuit,� said Jackson�s attorney, Camryn Stewart.
Isidra Person-Lynn, media director for Los Angeles Black Business Expo and the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality (nobrutality@sbcglobal.net) contributed to this report.
Check Out Mitchell Crooks Website
plenty of support for mitchell!
by Michael Zinzun
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:14 PM
Presentation On The Inglewood, California Police Beating
Of Donavon Jackson-Chavis
by Michael Zinzun
Coalition Against Police Abuse
Given July 13, 2002
On Saturday, July 6, 2002, shortly after Donovan Jackson-Chavis was beaten by the Inglewood P.D., his father Coby Chavis and his cousin,Taliba Shakir, called CAPA. What is CAPA?
The Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) was formed in Los Angeles in 1976 in response to a wave of police shootings, beatings, and harassment, and rapidly expanded because of the 1979 LAPD killing of Eula Mae Love. CAPA's membership over the years has been drawn from the Black and Latino communities, workers' organizations, churches, the gay community, the women's movement, and concerned individuals.
In the wake of the beating of Rodney King, CAPA pushed forward a plan for an elected civilian review board and special prosecutor, which was derailed by the inadequate reforms of the Christopher Commission. During the exposures of routine police brutality and criminality in the Rampart Division, CAPA, uniting with Mothers ROC and other groups, led a campaign exposing the systematic involvement of
the courts and the prosecutors in this abuse, and the fact that the same crimes are being committed throughout the LAPD, not only in Rampart but in Southeast, Foothill, Hollenbeck and all communities of color. Members of CAPA have been subjected ourselves to physical abuse by the police. A measure of our effectiveness is that the LAPD
was caught infiltrating and trying to disrupt our group, and 80 other groups and individuals who worked with CAPA. We sued and forced them to adopt a local Freedom of Information ordinance, to pay $1.5 million in damages, and to expose the names and identities of the undercover officers illegally engaged in political espionage. CAPA maintains extensive files both on individual officers and the systematic practices of police abuse, which we have shared with
families victimized by the police and all those fighting back.
CAPA believes that the reign of terror by the LAPD, and by police and sheriff's departments in L.A. and across the country - including the FBI, CIA, and INS - must be opposed and can be stopped. This means mobilizing and uniting a wide base of forces into a mass movement against police crime and abuse. CAPA is committed to calling attention to the many instances and the systematic nature of police abuse, and to bringing public pressure to bear in order to obtain justice. We want to educate people about our human and civil rights. We are training new leadership so that people can unite
to defend themselves and their democratic rights from further attack. We seek to unite as many people and organizations as possible from all races and nationalities, so that in our numbers we will have the unity and strength to defend our homes, families and human rights. We intend to mobilize, rely on, and give concrete direction to the people in our communities to stand up for their rights against police harassment, beatings, racist insults and murders. Only an aroused and united community can control the police.
We have a motto in CAPA that we all should relate to: "WE WON'T STRUGGLE FOR YA ... BUT WE WILL STRUGGLE WIT'CHA." We can bring some lessons and experience to the struggle, but the most important one is that the people are their own liberators.
Many of you will find or have found yourselves thrust into leadership roles in organizing in this and other fights for justice. James Forman, a leading organizer with the Student Non-Violent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC) once said, "The acid test of effective leadership by political organizers is their willingness to submit their role for
examination, evaluation, and criticism. They must be willing to do this with the people with whom they are working and within the unit they represent. It is their responsibility to lead this discussion and to always insist that their role is up for constant evaluation. Naturally they must be willing to evaluate their own efforts, to admit mistakes, to correct them and move on, for there is work
to be done."
He continued, "They must pay attention to details and follow through.Lack of follow-up is the graveyard of most ideas and plans. This death often flows from taking on too many jobs, inadequate planning or record keeping, and some times downright laziness."
A step some political organizers must take if they are to be
effective, Forman said: "They think they know, and yet, they may not know. The others may be right, for organizers must learn from the people with whom they work. Others can teach something and they must learn it. There is no place for a dogmatic position nor for a belief that 'I, the organizer, am absolutely right: I must have the last word.' This attitude may well lead to the final word, but there will be few people around willing to listen". It's important for the
community to take the lead in this fight for justice, and
then the politicians can follow our lead.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
The latest documented attack, on Donovan Jackson-Chavis, occurs in a context. I want to focus on the recent history of police in this country and the L.A. area, but we must also look further back. Bear in mind the historical period when many police laws, customs, and practices were developed. Post-slavery America was rife with white
supremacy, victimizing Blacks, Latinos/Indigenous and Asians in every part of the United States. Lynching, segregation, and invasions and destruction of Black, Mexicano and Chinese towns by white mobs went unchecked from Florida to California. Many public police departments grew out of private slave catchers and strike breakers, or vigilantes
like the Texas Rangers. It was a time when legalized racism was basically upheld by the Congress, state governments, and social institutions nation-wide.
Over the last few years, corrupt politicians and corporate media hype have tried to create hysteria about crime and terrorism to build support for aggressive policing. But in reality, crime is falling in every category, and the grass-roots "gang truce" efforts have reduced violence. There is, however, one category of crime that has steadily
increased, and one source of terror on the streets that has gone unchecked - the reign of terror by the police against the community.
A few high profile cases of brutality or murder, such as the beating of Rodney King, the torture of Abner Louima, or the killings of Johnny Gammage in Pittsburgh, Anthony Baez and Amadou Diallo in New York, Margaret Mitchell in L.A. and Malice Green in Detroit, make front page headlines. These accounts claim such cases are "aberrations" or exceptions. Yet night after night, day after day, far from the headlines and the TV cameras, the police harass, abuse, brutalize, and kill without fear of discipline or punishment. The same week that New York City cops rammed a toilet plunger stick up the rectum and down the throat of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, police in Chicago, Baltimore, and several other cities shot and killed unarmed young Black men; an officer in Philadelphia set his girlfriend on fire; another cop in Texas was let off for killing a mentally challenged person. None of these incidents were even mentioned in the national coverage of the Louima case.
In Los Angeles and surrounding cities, the police and sheriff continue to shoot civilians on the average of once a week, and to kill someone on the average once a month. This was true under Gates and remained true under Williams and Parks. In Philadelphia,
Indianapolis, New Orleans, Washington DC, and here in Los Angeles,massive scandals have erupted about police criminality and planting of evidence. In cities everywhere in the U.S., police abuse,brutality, corruption, and murder are rampant. The situation continues to get worse, in spite of every civic reform, because thepolice act as enforcers of the wretched and oppressive conditions of this society. Many police act as storm troopers, an occupying army who beat down any person who opposes or resists or speaks out against
growing exploitation and poverty. It's not a question of individual"good cops" and "bad cops." The real criminals are the economic and political elite, the owners of the huge international corporations that extract billions of dollars in profits by forcing people into
slavery, whether in child labor, "work-fare" systems, or the prisons.They use the police as their enforcers. This is why the police are being increasingly militarized, with helicopters, armored personnel carriers, heavy automatic and chemical weapons. Even so-called reforms, like "community oriented policing," are part of this military assault on our communities. Police describe "community oriented policing" as the domestic equivalent of "psychological operations" in the military. "Psy-ops" are the attempt to control the
thinking of the population or the enemy. The real answer is not community oriented policing, but community control of the
police.
HAVE THINGS CHANGED SINCE THE LA REBELLION OF 1992?
Yes, things have changed in California since the LA Rebellion of
1992.
* We have a DA's office which relies on local police departments to investigate their own, and to refer a token few criminal cases against police officers for prosecution without any real independent investigations, resulting in far fewer charges being brought agains police, and far more police getting away with crimes. * We have the Three Strike Laws, and the governor's attempt to eliminate parole.
* We have Proposition 21 (The Anti-Youth Law, to send children toadult prisons).
* We have more attempts to criminalize our youth through programs like Operation Weed & Seed and anti-gang task forces, which racially
and geographically profile many innocent youth as gang members or drug dealers.
* We have the further expansion of racial profiling to include walking, shopping, traveling, and flying. This plot is expanded by police chiefs refusing to document the ethnic make-up of those being stopped by police officers for public review.* We have had a so-called economic expansion that produced an increase in jails and prisons, not jobs, schools or justice.
* Since 9/11, we have witnessed an attempt by the government, by local police, and police commissioners to further expand police power, even at a time when most major departments are under some form of investigation for corruption, police crimes, cover-ups, and abuse
of power. As economic conditions for the masses of poor and working people deteriorate further, this increase in repressive police power will only accelerate.
THE BEATING IN INGLEWOOD
As I said, on Saturday, July 6, 2002, I received a call from Taliba, a relative, and from Coby Chavis, the father of Donovan Jackson-Chavis. Coby stated that his son had been beaten by the Inglewood P.D. I informed Coby of his son's legal rights, took a report and told him to make sure he took his son to the doctor. He stated he had taken his son to the doctor but would be going back. Little did we know that a good Samaritan, Mitchell Crooks,visiting from out of town, had not only video taped the beating, but clearly revealed the continuing failures of present police policies,
which had not deterred police abuses and corruption.
You and I know that such beatings and abuse occur regularly. The one that gets videotaped is the rare exception, the tip of the iceberg that brings the problem smack in the face of the larger community and galvanizes people. This beating doesn't indicate a problem with one bad officer or one bad police department, but rather a systematic crisis being repeated time and time again across the country. These
racist attacks by police aren't confined to healthy males but include the mentally challenged, seniors, and women of color. An increasing number of women are being killed by the police - two Black women killed by the cops in Long Beach in recent months are only a recentlocal example. This most recent beating comes on the heels of corruption, brutality, and police cover up in neighboring Los Angeles police departments' crash units. This pattern of abuse will not go
away by focusing on just on officer.
Our demands in the Inglewood case are:
* Criminal charges must be filed against all those involved in the beating and those officers who stood by and allowed the abuse to continue, or attempted to cover it up.
* We need a special prosecutor with parallel powers to the DA, whose sole purpose is to prosecute abusive, criminal police officerscountywide.
* We need punitive damages levied against corrupt, abusive police.Make them pay out of their own pockets! Why should taxpayers have to pay for police violence? City governments consider settlements and payouts for police abuse to be a 'cost of doing business.' This must stop!
* We need an elected civilian police review board with the power to hire and fire police brass and officers, change police policies an practices, and conduct independent investigations, a board with subpoena power.
People, we need to take a pro-active stance to protect our civil,constitutional, and human rights. We can't wait to re-act after the fact. We need to get organized in every precinct, on every block, to defend our rights, prevent police abuse and criminality, and to document it when it occurs.
MORE DEMANDS
In closing I would like to include several more key demands for you to internalize and call for:
* Expose and stop the written and unwritten policies, practices and customs that allow police to criminalize, abuse, shoot, and maim us.
* Stop the so-called "margin of error" allowed police. It is within this margin of error that most abuse takes place: "My foot slipped,"or "I thought he had a gun," or "I feared for my life." It's within that "margin of error" that juries acquitted the cops who beat Rodney King and those who killed Amadou Diallo.
* Stop the practice of people being "arrested for suspicion of."This is where an individual is arrested by police for suspicion of a crime; fingerprinted, photographed, found to be the wrong person, and then released. This "booking" stays on your record for the rest of your life, undermining your opportunity to get employment and better paying jobs. In New Jersey last year, such an arrest on suspicion led to the police killing the suspect in custody, before the real culprit was found.
* End racial profiling immediately, in all forms. Since 9/11, it is important to know that there haven't been that many new oppressive laws: What has happened is an expansion of existing police powers -to spy, detain, harass, and jail the people of this country who speak out about unjust policies, locally, nationally, and internationally.
New groups have been added to the racist profile.
* Stop the criminalization of our youth and eliminate the national and local police "gang" database.
* Repeal California Evidence code 1043 and Penal code 832.7. This would release citizen complaints filed on officers who were accused of beatings, abuse, shootings, and corruption statewide. We don't need any more government cover-ups. Doctors and lawyers are subject to public scrutiny. Only the history and record of police officers, with the power to beat and kill, is protected. WHY?
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
plenty of support for mitchell!
by Michael Zinzun
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:16 PM
Presentation On The Inglewood, California Police Beating
Of Donavon Jackson-Chavis
by Michael Zinzun
Coalition Against Police Abuse
Given July 13, 2002
On Saturday, July 6, 2002, shortly after Donovan Jackson-Chavis was beaten by the Inglewood P.D., his father Coby Chavis and his cousin,Taliba Shakir, called CAPA. What is CAPA?
The Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) was formed in Los Angeles in 1976 in response to a wave of police shootings, beatings, and harassment, and rapidly expanded because of the 1979 LAPD killing of Eula Mae Love. CAPA's membership over the years has been drawn from the Black and Latino communities, workers' organizations, churches, the gay community, the women's movement, and concerned individuals.
In the wake of the beating of Rodney King, CAPA pushed forward a plan for an elected civilian review board and special prosecutor, which was derailed by the inadequate reforms of the Christopher Commission. During the exposures of routine police brutality and criminality in the Rampart Division, CAPA, uniting with Mothers ROC and other groups, led a campaign exposing the systematic involvement of
the courts and the prosecutors in this abuse, and the fact that the same crimes are being committed throughout the LAPD, not only in Rampart but in Southeast, Foothill, Hollenbeck and all communities of color. Members of CAPA have been subjected ourselves to physical abuse by the police. A measure of our effectiveness is that the LAPD
was caught infiltrating and trying to disrupt our group, and 80 other groups and individuals who worked with CAPA. We sued and forced them to adopt a local Freedom of Information ordinance, to pay $1.5 million in damages, and to expose the names and identities of the undercover officers illegally engaged in political espionage. CAPA maintains extensive files both on individual officers and the systematic practices of police abuse, which we have shared with
families victimized by the police and all those fighting back.
CAPA believes that the reign of terror by the LAPD, and by police and sheriff's departments in L.A. and across the country - including the FBI, CIA, and INS - must be opposed and can be stopped. This means mobilizing and uniting a wide base of forces into a mass movement against police crime and abuse. CAPA is committed to calling attention to the many instances and the systematic nature of police abuse, and to bringing public pressure to bear in order to obtain justice. We want to educate people about our human and civil rights. We are training new leadership so that people can unite
to defend themselves and their democratic rights from further attack. We seek to unite as many people and organizations as possible from all races and nationalities, so that in our numbers we will have the unity and strength to defend our homes, families and human rights. We intend to mobilize, rely on, and give concrete direction to the people in our communities to stand up for their rights against police harassment, beatings, racist insults and murders. Only an aroused and united community can control the police.
We have a motto in CAPA that we all should relate to: "WE WON'T STRUGGLE FOR YA ... BUT WE WILL STRUGGLE WIT'CHA." We can bring some lessons and experience to the struggle, but the most important one is that the people are their own liberators.
Many of you will find or have found yourselves thrust into leadership roles in organizing in this and other fights for justice. James Forman, a leading organizer with the Student Non-Violent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC) once said, "The acid test of effective leadership by political organizers is their willingness to submit their role for
examination, evaluation, and criticism. They must be willing to do this with the people with whom they are working and within the unit they represent. It is their responsibility to lead this discussion and to always insist that their role is up for constant evaluation. Naturally they must be willing to evaluate their own efforts, to admit mistakes, to correct them and move on, for there is work
to be done."
He continued, "They must pay attention to details and follow through.Lack of follow-up is the graveyard of most ideas and plans. This death often flows from taking on too many jobs, inadequate planning or record keeping, and some times downright laziness."
A step some political organizers must take if they are to be
effective, Forman said: "They think they know, and yet, they may not know. The others may be right, for organizers must learn from the people with whom they work. Others can teach something and they must learn it. There is no place for a dogmatic position nor for a belief that 'I, the organizer, am absolutely right: I must have the last word.' This attitude may well lead to the final word, but there will be few people around willing to listen". It's important for the
community to take the lead in this fight for justice, and
then the politicians can follow our lead.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
The latest documented attack, on Donovan Jackson-Chavis, occurs in a context. I want to focus on the recent history of police in this country and the L.A. area, but we must also look further back. Bear in mind the historical period when many police laws, customs, and practices were developed. Post-slavery America was rife with white
supremacy, victimizing Blacks, Latinos/Indigenous and Asians in every part of the United States. Lynching, segregation, and invasions and destruction of Black, Mexicano and Chinese towns by white mobs went unchecked from Florida to California. Many public police departments grew out of private slave catchers and strike breakers, or vigilantes
like the Texas Rangers. It was a time when legalized racism was basically upheld by the Congress, state governments, and social institutions nation-wide.
Over the last few years, corrupt politicians and corporate media hype have tried to create hysteria about crime and terrorism to build support for aggressive policing. But in reality, crime is falling in every category, and the grass-roots "gang truce" efforts have reduced violence. There is, however, one category of crime that has steadily
increased, and one source of terror on the streets that has gone unchecked - the reign of terror by the police against the community.
A few high profile cases of brutality or murder, such as the beating of Rodney King, the torture of Abner Louima, or the killings of Johnny Gammage in Pittsburgh, Anthony Baez and Amadou Diallo in New York, Margaret Mitchell in L.A. and Malice Green in Detroit, make front page headlines. These accounts claim such cases are "aberrations" or exceptions. Yet night after night, day after day, far from the headlines and the TV cameras, the police harass, abuse, brutalize, and kill without fear of discipline or punishment. The same week that New York City cops rammed a toilet plunger stick up the rectum and down the throat of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, police in Chicago, Baltimore, and several other cities shot and killed unarmed young Black men; an officer in Philadelphia set his girlfriend on fire; another cop in Texas was let off for killing a mentally challenged person. None of these incidents were even mentioned in the national coverage of the Louima case.
In Los Angeles and surrounding cities, the police and sheriff continue to shoot civilians on the average of once a week, and to kill someone on the average once a month. This was true under Gates and remained true under Williams and Parks. In Philadelphia,
Indianapolis, New Orleans, Washington DC, and here in Los Angeles,massive scandals have erupted about police criminality and planting of evidence. In cities everywhere in the U.S., police abuse,brutality, corruption, and murder are rampant. The situation continues to get worse, in spite of every civic reform, because thepolice act as enforcers of the wretched and oppressive conditions of this society. Many police act as storm troopers, an occupying army who beat down any person who opposes or resists or speaks out against
growing exploitation and poverty. It's not a question of individual"good cops" and "bad cops." The real criminals are the economic and political elite, the owners of the huge international corporations that extract billions of dollars in profits by forcing people into
slavery, whether in child labor, "work-fare" systems, or the prisons.They use the police as their enforcers. This is why the police are being increasingly militarized, with helicopters, armored personnel carriers, heavy automatic and chemical weapons. Even so-called reforms, like "community oriented policing," are part of this military assault on our communities. Police describe "community oriented policing" as the domestic equivalent of "psychological operations" in the military. "Psy-ops" are the attempt to control the
thinking of the population or the enemy. The real answer is not community oriented policing, but community control of the
police.
HAVE THINGS CHANGED SINCE THE LA REBELLION OF 1992?
Yes, things have changed in California since the LA Rebellion of
1992.
* We have a DA's office which relies on local police departments to investigate their own, and to refer a token few criminal cases against police officers for prosecution without any real independent investigations, resulting in far fewer charges being brought agains police, and far more police getting away with crimes. * We have the Three Strike Laws, and the governor's attempt to eliminate parole.
* We have Proposition 21 (The Anti-Youth Law, to send children toadult prisons).
* We have more attempts to criminalize our youth through programs like Operation Weed & Seed and anti-gang task forces, which racially
and geographically profile many innocent youth as gang members or drug dealers.
* We have the further expansion of racial profiling to include walking, shopping, traveling, and flying. This plot is expanded by police chiefs refusing to document the ethnic make-up of those being stopped by police officers for public review.* We have had a so-called economic expansion that produced an increase in jails and prisons, not jobs, schools or justice.
* Since 9/11, we have witnessed an attempt by the government, by local police, and police commissioners to further expand police power, even at a time when most major departments are under some form of investigation for corruption, police crimes, cover-ups, and abuse
of power. As economic conditions for the masses of poor and working people deteriorate further, this increase in repressive police power will only accelerate.
THE BEATING IN INGLEWOOD
As I said, on Saturday, July 6, 2002, I received a call from Taliba, a relative, and from Coby Chavis, the father of Donovan Jackson-Chavis. Coby stated that his son had been beaten by the Inglewood P.D. I informed Coby of his son's legal rights, took a report and told him to make sure he took his son to the doctor. He stated he had taken his son to the doctor but would be going back. Little did we know that a good Samaritan, Mitchell Crooks,visiting from out of town, had not only video taped the beating, but clearly revealed the continuing failures of present police policies,
which had not deterred police abuses and corruption.
You and I know that such beatings and abuse occur regularly. The one that gets videotaped is the rare exception, the tip of the iceberg that brings the problem smack in the face of the larger community and galvanizes people. This beating doesn't indicate a problem with one bad officer or one bad police department, but rather a systematic crisis being repeated time and time again across the country. These
racist attacks by police aren't confined to healthy males but include the mentally challenged, seniors, and women of color. An increasing number of women are being killed by the police - two Black women killed by the cops in Long Beach in recent months are only a recentlocal example. This most recent beating comes on the heels of corruption, brutality, and police cover up in neighboring Los Angeles police departments' crash units. This pattern of abuse will not go
away by focusing on just on officer.
Our demands in the Inglewood case are:
* Criminal charges must be filed against all those involved in the beating and those officers who stood by and allowed the abuse to continue, or attempted to cover it up.
* We need a special prosecutor with parallel powers to the DA, whose sole purpose is to prosecute abusive, criminal police officerscountywide.
* We need punitive damages levied against corrupt, abusive police.Make them pay out of their own pockets! Why should taxpayers have to pay for police violence? City governments consider settlements and payouts for police abuse to be a 'cost of doing business.' This must stop!
* We need an elected civilian police review board with the power to hire and fire police brass and officers, change police policies an practices, and conduct independent investigations, a board with subpoena power.
People, we need to take a pro-active stance to protect our civil,constitutional, and human rights. We can't wait to re-act after the fact. We need to get organized in every precinct, on every block, to defend our rights, prevent police abuse and criminality, and to document it when it occurs.
MORE DEMANDS
In closing I would like to include several more key demands for you to internalize and call for:
* Expose and stop the written and unwritten policies, practices and customs that allow police to criminalize, abuse, shoot, and maim us.
* Stop the so-called "margin of error" allowed police. It is within this margin of error that most abuse takes place: "My foot slipped,"or "I thought he had a gun," or "I feared for my life." It's within that "margin of error" that juries acquitted the cops who beat Rodney King and those who killed Amadou Diallo.
* Stop the practice of people being "arrested for suspicion of."This is where an individual is arrested by police for suspicion of a crime; fingerprinted, photographed, found to be the wrong person, and then released. This "booking" stays on your record for the rest of your life, undermining your opportunity to get employment and better paying jobs. In New Jersey last year, such an arrest on suspicion led to the police killing the suspect in custody, before the real culprit was found.
* End racial profiling immediately, in all forms. Since 9/11, it is important to know that there haven't been that many new oppressive laws: What has happened is an expansion of existing police powers -to spy, detain, harass, and jail the people of this country who speak out about unjust policies, locally, nationally, and internationally.
New groups have been added to the racist profile.
* Stop the criminalization of our youth and eliminate the national and local police "gang" database.
* Repeal California Evidence code 1043 and Penal code 832.7. This would release citizen complaints filed on officers who were accused of beatings, abuse, shootings, and corruption statewide. We don't need any more government cover-ups. Doctors and lawyers are subject to public scrutiny. Only the history and record of police officers, with the power to beat and kill, is protected. WHY?
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
plenty of support for mitchell!
by Michael Zinzun
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:17 PM
Presentation On The Inglewood, California Police Beating
Of Donavon Jackson-Chavis
by Michael Zinzun
Coalition Against Police Abuse
Given July 13, 2002
On Saturday, July 6, 2002, shortly after Donovan Jackson-Chavis was beaten by the Inglewood P.D., his father Coby Chavis and his cousin,Taliba Shakir, called CAPA. What is CAPA?
The Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) was formed in Los Angeles in 1976 in response to a wave of police shootings, beatings, and harassment, and rapidly expanded because of the 1979 LAPD killing of Eula Mae Love. CAPA's membership over the years has been drawn from the Black and Latino communities, workers' organizations, churches, the gay community, the women's movement, and concerned individuals.
In the wake of the beating of Rodney King, CAPA pushed forward a plan for an elected civilian review board and special prosecutor, which was derailed by the inadequate reforms of the Christopher Commission. During the exposures of routine police brutality and criminality in the Rampart Division, CAPA, uniting with Mothers ROC and other groups, led a campaign exposing the systematic involvement of
the courts and the prosecutors in this abuse, and the fact that the same crimes are being committed throughout the LAPD, not only in Rampart but in Southeast, Foothill, Hollenbeck and all communities of color. Members of CAPA have been subjected ourselves to physical abuse by the police. A measure of our effectiveness is that the LAPD
was caught infiltrating and trying to disrupt our group, and 80 other groups and individuals who worked with CAPA. We sued and forced them to adopt a local Freedom of Information ordinance, to pay $1.5 million in damages, and to expose the names and identities of the undercover officers illegally engaged in political espionage. CAPA maintains extensive files both on individual officers and the systematic practices of police abuse, which we have shared with
families victimized by the police and all those fighting back.
CAPA believes that the reign of terror by the LAPD, and by police and sheriff's departments in L.A. and across the country - including the FBI, CIA, and INS - must be opposed and can be stopped. This means mobilizing and uniting a wide base of forces into a mass movement against police crime and abuse. CAPA is committed to calling attention to the many instances and the systematic nature of police abuse, and to bringing public pressure to bear in order to obtain justice. We want to educate people about our human and civil rights. We are training new leadership so that people can unite
to defend themselves and their democratic rights from further attack. We seek to unite as many people and organizations as possible from all races and nationalities, so that in our numbers we will have the unity and strength to defend our homes, families and human rights. We intend to mobilize, rely on, and give concrete direction to the people in our communities to stand up for their rights against police harassment, beatings, racist insults and murders. Only an aroused and united community can control the police.
We have a motto in CAPA that we all should relate to: "WE WON'T STRUGGLE FOR YA ... BUT WE WILL STRUGGLE WIT'CHA." We can bring some lessons and experience to the struggle, but the most important one is that the people are their own liberators.
Many of you will find or have found yourselves thrust into leadership roles in organizing in this and other fights for justice. James Forman, a leading organizer with the Student Non-Violent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC) once said, "The acid test of effective leadership by political organizers is their willingness to submit their role for
examination, evaluation, and criticism. They must be willing to do this with the people with whom they are working and within the unit they represent. It is their responsibility to lead this discussion and to always insist that their role is up for constant evaluation. Naturally they must be willing to evaluate their own efforts, to admit mistakes, to correct them and move on, for there is work
to be done."
He continued, "They must pay attention to details and follow through.Lack of follow-up is the graveyard of most ideas and plans. This death often flows from taking on too many jobs, inadequate planning or record keeping, and some times downright laziness."
A step some political organizers must take if they are to be
effective, Forman said: "They think they know, and yet, they may not know. The others may be right, for organizers must learn from the people with whom they work. Others can teach something and they must learn it. There is no place for a dogmatic position nor for a belief that 'I, the organizer, am absolutely right: I must have the last word.' This attitude may well lead to the final word, but there will be few people around willing to listen". It's important for the
community to take the lead in this fight for justice, and
then the politicians can follow our lead.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
The latest documented attack, on Donovan Jackson-Chavis, occurs in a context. I want to focus on the recent history of police in this country and the L.A. area, but we must also look further back. Bear in mind the historical period when many police laws, customs, and practices were developed. Post-slavery America was rife with white
supremacy, victimizing Blacks, Latinos/Indigenous and Asians in every part of the United States. Lynching, segregation, and invasions and destruction of Black, Mexicano and Chinese towns by white mobs went unchecked from Florida to California. Many public police departments grew out of private slave catchers and strike breakers, or vigilantes
like the Texas Rangers. It was a time when legalized racism was basically upheld by the Congress, state governments, and social institutions nation-wide.
Over the last few years, corrupt politicians and corporate media hype have tried to create hysteria about crime and terrorism to build support for aggressive policing. But in reality, crime is falling in every category, and the grass-roots "gang truce" efforts have reduced violence. There is, however, one category of crime that has steadily
increased, and one source of terror on the streets that has gone unchecked - the reign of terror by the police against the community.
A few high profile cases of brutality or murder, such as the beating of Rodney King, the torture of Abner Louima, or the killings of Johnny Gammage in Pittsburgh, Anthony Baez and Amadou Diallo in New York, Margaret Mitchell in L.A. and Malice Green in Detroit, make front page headlines. These accounts claim such cases are "aberrations" or exceptions. Yet night after night, day after day, far from the headlines and the TV cameras, the police harass, abuse, brutalize, and kill without fear of discipline or punishment. The same week that New York City cops rammed a toilet plunger stick up the rectum and down the throat of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, police in Chicago, Baltimore, and several other cities shot and killed unarmed young Black men; an officer in Philadelphia set his girlfriend on fire; another cop in Texas was let off for killing a mentally challenged person. None of these incidents were even mentioned in the national coverage of the Louima case.
In Los Angeles and surrounding cities, the police and sheriff continue to shoot civilians on the average of once a week, and to kill someone on the average once a month. This was true under Gates and remained true under Williams and Parks. In Philadelphia,
Indianapolis, New Orleans, Washington DC, and here in Los Angeles,massive scandals have erupted about police criminality and planting of evidence. In cities everywhere in the U.S., police abuse,brutality, corruption, and murder are rampant. The situation continues to get worse, in spite of every civic reform, because thepolice act as enforcers of the wretched and oppressive conditions of this society. Many police act as storm troopers, an occupying army who beat down any person who opposes or resists or speaks out against
growing exploitation and poverty. It's not a question of individual"good cops" and "bad cops." The real criminals are the economic and political elite, the owners of the huge international corporations that extract billions of dollars in profits by forcing people into
slavery, whether in child labor, "work-fare" systems, or the prisons.They use the police as their enforcers. This is why the police are being increasingly militarized, with helicopters, armored personnel carriers, heavy automatic and chemical weapons. Even so-called reforms, like "community oriented policing," are part of this military assault on our communities. Police describe "community oriented policing" as the domestic equivalent of "psychological operations" in the military. "Psy-ops" are the attempt to control the
thinking of the population or the enemy. The real answer is not community oriented policing, but community control of the
police.
HAVE THINGS CHANGED SINCE THE LA REBELLION OF 1992?
Yes, things have changed in California since the LA Rebellion of
1992.
* We have a DA's office which relies on local police departments to investigate their own, and to refer a token few criminal cases against police officers for prosecution without any real independent investigations, resulting in far fewer charges being brought agains police, and far more police getting away with crimes. * We have the Three Strike Laws, and the governor's attempt to eliminate parole.
* We have Proposition 21 (The Anti-Youth Law, to send children toadult prisons).
* We have more attempts to criminalize our youth through programs like Operation Weed & Seed and anti-gang task forces, which racially
and geographically profile many innocent youth as gang members or drug dealers.
* We have the further expansion of racial profiling to include walking, shopping, traveling, and flying. This plot is expanded by police chiefs refusing to document the ethnic make-up of those being stopped by police officers for public review.* We have had a so-called economic expansion that produced an increase in jails and prisons, not jobs, schools or justice.
* Since 9/11, we have witnessed an attempt by the government, by local police, and police commissioners to further expand police power, even at a time when most major departments are under some form of investigation for corruption, police crimes, cover-ups, and abuse
of power. As economic conditions for the masses of poor and working people deteriorate further, this increase in repressive police power will only accelerate.
THE BEATING IN INGLEWOOD
As I said, on Saturday, July 6, 2002, I received a call from Taliba, a relative, and from Coby Chavis, the father of Donovan Jackson-Chavis. Coby stated that his son had been beaten by the Inglewood P.D. I informed Coby of his son's legal rights, took a report and told him to make sure he took his son to the doctor. He stated he had taken his son to the doctor but would be going back. Little did we know that a good Samaritan, Mitchell Crooks,visiting from out of town, had not only video taped the beating, but clearly revealed the continuing failures of present police policies,
which had not deterred police abuses and corruption.
You and I know that such beatings and abuse occur regularly. The one that gets videotaped is the rare exception, the tip of the iceberg that brings the problem smack in the face of the larger community and galvanizes people. This beating doesn't indicate a problem with one bad officer or one bad police department, but rather a systematic crisis being repeated time and time again across the country. These
racist attacks by police aren't confined to healthy males but include the mentally challenged, seniors, and women of color. An increasing number of women are being killed by the police - two Black women killed by the cops in Long Beach in recent months are only a recentlocal example. This most recent beating comes on the heels of corruption, brutality, and police cover up in neighboring Los Angeles police departments' crash units. This pattern of abuse will not go
away by focusing on just on officer.
Our demands in the Inglewood case are:
* Criminal charges must be filed against all those involved in the beating and those officers who stood by and allowed the abuse to continue, or attempted to cover it up.
* We need a special prosecutor with parallel powers to the DA, whose sole purpose is to prosecute abusive, criminal police officerscountywide.
* We need punitive damages levied against corrupt, abusive police.Make them pay out of their own pockets! Why should taxpayers have to pay for police violence? City governments consider settlements and payouts for police abuse to be a 'cost of doing business.' This must stop!
* We need an elected civilian police review board with the power to hire and fire police brass and officers, change police policies an practices, and conduct independent investigations, a board with subpoena power.
People, we need to take a pro-active stance to protect our civil,constitutional, and human rights. We can't wait to re-act after the fact. We need to get organized in every precinct, on every block, to defend our rights, prevent police abuse and criminality, and to document it when it occurs.
MORE DEMANDS
In closing I would like to include several more key demands for you to internalize and call for:
* Expose and stop the written and unwritten policies, practices and customs that allow police to criminalize, abuse, shoot, and maim us.
* Stop the so-called "margin of error" allowed police. It is within this margin of error that most abuse takes place: "My foot slipped,"or "I thought he had a gun," or "I feared for my life." It's within that "margin of error" that juries acquitted the cops who beat Rodney King and those who killed Amadou Diallo.
* Stop the practice of people being "arrested for suspicion of."This is where an individual is arrested by police for suspicion of a crime; fingerprinted, photographed, found to be the wrong person, and then released. This "booking" stays on your record for the rest of your life, undermining your opportunity to get employment and better paying jobs. In New Jersey last year, such an arrest on suspicion led to the police killing the suspect in custody, before the real culprit was found.
* End racial profiling immediately, in all forms. Since 9/11, it is important to know that there haven't been that many new oppressive laws: What has happened is an expansion of existing police powers -to spy, detain, harass, and jail the people of this country who speak out about unjust policies, locally, nationally, and internationally.
New groups have been added to the racist profile.
* Stop the criminalization of our youth and eliminate the national and local police "gang" database.
* Repeal California Evidence code 1043 and Penal code 832.7. This would release citizen complaints filed on officers who were accused of beatings, abuse, shootings, and corruption statewide. We don't need any more government cover-ups. Doctors and lawyers are subject to public scrutiny. Only the history and record of police officers, with the power to beat and kill, is protected. WHY?
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
plenty of support for mitchell!
by Michael Zinzun
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:17 PM
Presentation On The Inglewood, California Police Beating
Of Donavon Jackson-Chavis
by Michael Zinzun
Coalition Against Police Abuse
Given July 13, 2002
On Saturday, July 6, 2002, shortly after Donovan Jackson-Chavis was beaten by the Inglewood P.D., his father Coby Chavis and his cousin,Taliba Shakir, called CAPA. What is CAPA?
The Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) was formed in Los Angeles in 1976 in response to a wave of police shootings, beatings, and harassment, and rapidly expanded because of the 1979 LAPD killing of Eula Mae Love. CAPA's membership over the years has been drawn from the Black and Latino communities, workers' organizations, churches, the gay community, the women's movement, and concerned individuals.
In the wake of the beating of Rodney King, CAPA pushed forward a plan for an elected civilian review board and special prosecutor, which was derailed by the inadequate reforms of the Christopher Commission. During the exposures of routine police brutality and criminality in the Rampart Division, CAPA, uniting with Mothers ROC and other groups, led a campaign exposing the systematic involvement of
the courts and the prosecutors in this abuse, and the fact that the same crimes are being committed throughout the LAPD, not only in Rampart but in Southeast, Foothill, Hollenbeck and all communities of color. Members of CAPA have been subjected ourselves to physical abuse by the police. A measure of our effectiveness is that the LAPD
was caught infiltrating and trying to disrupt our group, and 80 other groups and individuals who worked with CAPA. We sued and forced them to adopt a local Freedom of Information ordinance, to pay $1.5 million in damages, and to expose the names and identities of the undercover officers illegally engaged in political espionage. CAPA maintains extensive files both on individual officers and the systematic practices of police abuse, which we have shared with
families victimized by the police and all those fighting back.
CAPA believes that the reign of terror by the LAPD, and by police and sheriff's departments in L.A. and across the country - including the FBI, CIA, and INS - must be opposed and can be stopped. This means mobilizing and uniting a wide base of forces into a mass movement against police crime and abuse. CAPA is committed to calling attention to the many instances and the systematic nature of police abuse, and to bringing public pressure to bear in order to obtain justice. We want to educate people about our human and civil rights. We are training new leadership so that people can unite
to defend themselves and their democratic rights from further attack. We seek to unite as many people and organizations as possible from all races and nationalities, so that in our numbers we will have the unity and strength to defend our homes, families and human rights. We intend to mobilize, rely on, and give concrete direction to the people in our communities to stand up for their rights against police harassment, beatings, racist insults and murders. Only an aroused and united community can control the police.
We have a motto in CAPA that we all should relate to: "WE WON'T STRUGGLE FOR YA ... BUT WE WILL STRUGGLE WIT'CHA." We can bring some lessons and experience to the struggle, but the most important one is that the people are their own liberators.
Many of you will find or have found yourselves thrust into leadership roles in organizing in this and other fights for justice. James Forman, a leading organizer with the Student Non-Violent CoordinatingCommittee (SNCC) once said, "The acid test of effective leadership by political organizers is their willingness to submit their role for
examination, evaluation, and criticism. They must be willing to do this with the people with whom they are working and within the unit they represent. It is their responsibility to lead this discussion and to always insist that their role is up for constant evaluation. Naturally they must be willing to evaluate their own efforts, to admit mistakes, to correct them and move on, for there is work
to be done."
He continued, "They must pay attention to details and follow through.Lack of follow-up is the graveyard of most ideas and plans. This death often flows from taking on too many jobs, inadequate planning or record keeping, and some times downright laziness."
A step some political organizers must take if they are to be
effective, Forman said: "They think they know, and yet, they may not know. The others may be right, for organizers must learn from the people with whom they work. Others can teach something and they must learn it. There is no place for a dogmatic position nor for a belief that 'I, the organizer, am absolutely right: I must have the last word.' This attitude may well lead to the final word, but there will be few people around willing to listen". It's important for the
community to take the lead in this fight for justice, and
then the politicians can follow our lead.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
The latest documented attack, on Donovan Jackson-Chavis, occurs in a context. I want to focus on the recent history of police in this country and the L.A. area, but we must also look further back. Bear in mind the historical period when many police laws, customs, and practices were developed. Post-slavery America was rife with white
supremacy, victimizing Blacks, Latinos/Indigenous and Asians in every part of the United States. Lynching, segregation, and invasions and destruction of Black, Mexicano and Chinese towns by white mobs went unchecked from Florida to California. Many public police departments grew out of private slave catchers and strike breakers, or vigilantes
like the Texas Rangers. It was a time when legalized racism was basically upheld by the Congress, state governments, and social institutions nation-wide.
Over the last few years, corrupt politicians and corporate media hype have tried to create hysteria about crime and terrorism to build support for aggressive policing. But in reality, crime is falling in every category, and the grass-roots "gang truce" efforts have reduced violence. There is, however, one category of crime that has steadily
increased, and one source of terror on the streets that has gone unchecked - the reign of terror by the police against the community.
A few high profile cases of brutality or murder, such as the beating of Rodney King, the torture of Abner Louima, or the killings of Johnny Gammage in Pittsburgh, Anthony Baez and Amadou Diallo in New York, Margaret Mitchell in L.A. and Malice Green in Detroit, make front page headlines. These accounts claim such cases are "aberrations" or exceptions. Yet night after night, day after day, far from the headlines and the TV cameras, the police harass, abuse, brutalize, and kill without fear of discipline or punishment. The same week that New York City cops rammed a toilet plunger stick up the rectum and down the throat of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, police in Chicago, Baltimore, and several other cities shot and killed unarmed young Black men; an officer in Philadelphia set his girlfriend on fire; another cop in Texas was let off for killing a mentally challenged person. None of these incidents were even mentioned in the national coverage of the Louima case.
In Los Angeles and surrounding cities, the police and sheriff continue to shoot civilians on the average of once a week, and to kill someone on the average once a month. This was true under Gates and remained true under Williams and Parks. In Philadelphia,
Indianapolis, New Orleans, Washington DC, and here in Los Angeles,massive scandals have erupted about police criminality and planting of evidence. In cities everywhere in the U.S., police abuse,brutality, corruption, and murder are rampant. The situation continues to get worse, in spite of every civic reform, because thepolice act as enforcers of the wretched and oppressive conditions of this society. Many police act as storm troopers, an occupying army who beat down any person who opposes or resists or speaks out against
growing exploitation and poverty. It's not a question of individual"good cops" and "bad cops." The real criminals are the economic and political elite, the owners of the huge international corporations that extract billions of dollars in profits by forcing people into
slavery, whether in child labor, "work-fare" systems, or the prisons.They use the police as their enforcers. This is why the police are being increasingly militarized, with helicopters, armored personnel carriers, heavy automatic and chemical weapons. Even so-called reforms, like "community oriented policing," are part of this military assault on our communities. Police describe "community oriented policing" as the domestic equivalent of "psychological operations" in the military. "Psy-ops" are the attempt to control the
thinking of the population or the enemy. The real answer is not community oriented policing, but community control of the
police.
HAVE THINGS CHANGED SINCE THE LA REBELLION OF 1992?
Yes, things have changed in California since the LA Rebellion of
1992.
* We have a DA's office which relies on local police departments to investigate their own, and to refer a token few criminal cases against police officers for prosecution without any real independent investigations, resulting in far fewer charges being brought agains police, and far more police getting away with crimes. * We have the Three Strike Laws, and the governor's attempt to eliminate parole.
* We have Proposition 21 (The Anti-Youth Law, to send children toadult prisons).
* We have more attempts to criminalize our youth through programs like Operation Weed & Seed and anti-gang task forces, which racially
and geographically profile many innocent youth as gang members or drug dealers.
* We have the further expansion of racial profiling to include walking, shopping, traveling, and flying. This plot is expanded by police chiefs refusing to document the ethnic make-up of those being stopped by police officers for public review.* We have had a so-called economic expansion that produced an increase in jails and prisons, not jobs, schools or justice.
* Since 9/11, we have witnessed an attempt by the government, by local police, and police commissioners to further expand police power, even at a time when most major departments are under some form of investigation for corruption, police crimes, cover-ups, and abuse
of power. As economic conditions for the masses of poor and working people deteriorate further, this increase in repressive police power will only accelerate.
THE BEATING IN INGLEWOOD
As I said, on Saturday, July 6, 2002, I received a call from Taliba, a relative, and from Coby Chavis, the father of Donovan Jackson-Chavis. Coby stated that his son had been beaten by the Inglewood P.D. I informed Coby of his son's legal rights, took a report and told him to make sure he took his son to the doctor. He stated he had taken his son to the doctor but would be going back. Little did we know that a good Samaritan, Mitchell Crooks,visiting from out of town, had not only video taped the beating, but clearly revealed the continuing failures of present police policies,
which had not deterred police abuses and corruption.
You and I know that such beatings and abuse occur regularly. The one that gets videotaped is the rare exception, the tip of the iceberg that brings the problem smack in the face of the larger community and galvanizes people. This beating doesn't indicate a problem with one bad officer or one bad police department, but rather a systematic crisis being repeated time and time again across the country. These
racist attacks by police aren't confined to healthy males but include the mentally challenged, seniors, and women of color. An increasing number of women are being killed by the police - two Black women killed by the cops in Long Beach in recent months are only a recentlocal example. This most recent beating comes on the heels of corruption, brutality, and police cover up in neighboring Los Angeles police departments' crash units. This pattern of abuse will not go
away by focusing on just on officer.
Our demands in the Inglewood case are:
* Criminal charges must be filed against all those involved in the beating and those officers who stood by and allowed the abuse to continue, or attempted to cover it up.
* We need a special prosecutor with parallel powers to the DA, whose sole purpose is to prosecute abusive, criminal police officerscountywide.
* We need punitive damages levied against corrupt, abusive police.Make them pay out of their own pockets! Why should taxpayers have to pay for police violence? City governments consider settlements and payouts for police abuse to be a 'cost of doing business.' This must stop!
* We need an elected civilian police review board with the power to hire and fire police brass and officers, change police policies an practices, and conduct independent investigations, a board with subpoena power.
People, we need to take a pro-active stance to protect our civil,constitutional, and human rights. We can't wait to re-act after the fact. We need to get organized in every precinct, on every block, to defend our rights, prevent police abuse and criminality, and to document it when it occurs.
MORE DEMANDS
In closing I would like to include several more key demands for you to internalize and call for:
* Expose and stop the written and unwritten policies, practices and customs that allow police to criminalize, abuse, shoot, and maim us.
* Stop the so-called "margin of error" allowed police. It is within this margin of error that most abuse takes place: "My foot slipped,"or "I thought he had a gun," or "I feared for my life." It's within that "margin of error" that juries acquitted the cops who beat Rodney King and those who killed Amadou Diallo.
* Stop the practice of people being "arrested for suspicion of."This is where an individual is arrested by police for suspicion of a crime; fingerprinted, photographed, found to be the wrong person, and then released. This "booking" stays on your record for the rest of your life, undermining your opportunity to get employment and better paying jobs. In New Jersey last year, such an arrest on suspicion led to the police killing the suspect in custody, before the real culprit was found.
* End racial profiling immediately, in all forms. Since 9/11, it is important to know that there haven't been that many new oppressive laws: What has happened is an expansion of existing police powers -to spy, detain, harass, and jail the people of this country who speak out about unjust policies, locally, nationally, and internationally.
New groups have been added to the racist profile.
* Stop the criminalization of our youth and eliminate the national and local police "gang" database.
* Repeal California Evidence code 1043 and Penal code 832.7. This would release citizen complaints filed on officers who were accused of beatings, abuse, shootings, and corruption statewide. We don't need any more government cover-ups. Doctors and lawyers are subject to public scrutiny. Only the history and record of police officers, with the power to beat and kill, is protected. WHY?
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
An anarchist veiw on MKING
by LEFTovermoldypizzacheez
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:20 PM
News about and of interest to anarchists
http://ainfos.ca/ http://ainfos.ca/index24.html
________________________________________________
When you get the white man over here in America and he says he's
white he means he's boss. -Malcolm X
One of the most compelling aspects of anarchism is its holistic
approach to human freedom. We are opposed to all forms of
domination and oppression is a phrase that appears almost
universally in every statement of purpose and political statement of
anarchist collectives and projects. This reflects anarchisms
total rejection of all forms of oppression and its belief that no one
oppression is the base or primary oppression upon which
all other oppressions rest. Racism or sexism could thrive in a
socialist society, and eradicating racism or sexism by no means
guarantees the eradication of capitalism or the state. Oppressions,
as the saying goes, are relatively autonomous. This is an important
insight that developed out of a critique of the crude class
reductionism of neo-Marxism and was often used as an excuse by
white, male leftists to not take the seriously the struggles for racial
justice, womens liberation, and queer liberation. However,
when pressed to develop this analysis further, anarchism falls
silent. Beyond recognizing this relative autonomy (and
thus the relative interconnectedness of various
oppressions), anarchism has failed to articulate precisely how
these oppressions interconnect in a way that is useful for
organizers. Predictably, this has hampered the capacity for
anarchists to effectively develop the analysis of society that is
needed to develop strategies for revolution.
Moral Equivalency, Strategic Hierarchy
For revolutionaries, it is not simply enough to oppose all forms of
authority and oppression; we need a plan for destroying them. If we
are to transform society, we must understand precisely how forms
of authority are related and determine where the weak points are
so we can develop effective strategies. An important step in
developing a strategy is the recognition that while oppressions are
morally equivalent, strategically they are not. Many organizers
implicitly accept this notion in practiceat least when it comes
to systems of authority other than race, class, gender, and sexual
orientation. Anarchists who do community organizing on a regular
basis know the importance of working with religious
institutionschurches, mosques, and synagoguesin any
organizing effort. They do this despite anarchisms opposition
to religious forms of authority. To use just one example, in the
immediate aftermath of September 11th, anarchists from across
the country, clad in their black No Gods, No Masters
t-shirts, began working closely with Muslim groups and mosques in
their cities in order to assist Arab and Muslim communities with
self-defense efforts. Clearly this was the correct thing to do and
consciously or not, reflected an assessment by anarchists that
defending Muslims from attacks by racists and the state takes a
strategic priority over anarchisms (largely philosophical and
ideological) opposition to forms religious authority. A second
important step in developing a strategy is the recognition that
oppressions connect in ways particular to the historical context
and social forces in which they develop. The relationships between
race, class, and gender in one country are likely to be quite
different than it is in another, and therefore the strategies for
destroying them will also be different. The U.S.s rather unique
history of racial slavery and segregation have made white
supremacy central to the functioning of America in a way it
hasnt in others societies. Activists must understand the ways
that the particular historical experiences of the United States wove
race and class together that makes fighting white supremacy
central to any revolutionary project. In other words, those who
wish to fight against all forms of authoritarianism must understand
one crucial fact of American politicsin America authority is
colored white.
The White Shadow
In the United States, one cannot escape the importance of race.
Anyone familiar with the literature of critical race theory already
knows this basic truth: that race is a social construct with no
biological basis. Though biologically race is fiction, it is
still a social reality. Race is a signifier of social, legal, economic,
and political value (or lack thereof) in America. White supremacy
casts a long shadow over American society and colors more than
just the consciousness of white folks. It has institutionalized white
privilege in political institutions, the courts, schools, and labor
unions to name just a few. The state not only legitimates these
privileges, it also actively enforces them in the back rooms,
through public policy, and in the frontlines, through police, prisons,
and jails. American society grants real and significant material and
psychological benefits to those defined as white.
One of the affects of these benefits has been that the white
working class has identified its interests with the white ruling
class and not with the rest of the working class; this has
effectively driven a wedge within the working classa fact
illustrated every time a real estate agent steers a Black
family to a Black neighborhood and every time a bus driver made
Black folks sit in the back of the bus. In order to seriously
challenge the existing system, this wedge must be removed. A
successful, anti-authoritarian revolution in American can be
engendered by a revolutionary crisis in the institutions of white
supremacy. As happened during Reconstruction and the Civil
Rights Movement, attacks against institutions of white supremacy
generated such a crisis and opened up political space for
movements to attack not only racial oppression, but also all forms
of domination. In the case of Reconstruction, the United States
was brought to the brink of a social revolution, the first wave of
feminism emerged from the abolitionist struggles, and queer
liberation, AIM and countless other struggles for freedom emerged
on the heels of the Civil Rights movement. The lesson learned here
should be clear: a strategic orientation to the destruction of white
supremacy does NOT violate the anarchist opposition to all forms
of oppression, rather it fulfills the potential of their
anti-authoritarian vision.
White Abolitionism as a Strategy for Revolution
When Donovan Jackson, a Black youth, was brutally beaten by a
white police officer in Inglewood, California last summer, the
incident was caught on videotape by Mitchell Crooks, who is
white. A revealing twist to this incident lies in the fact that the
first two people arrested in connection with this incident were
Jackson, the Black victim, and Crooks, the white man whose
videotape exposed the police brutality. In this moment we see
enforcement of the color line by the state twice: first in the all too
common form of police abuse in the Black community and secondly
in the form of the harsh retribution against the person who exposed
one instance of that abuse. Crookss act was an instance of
race treasonwhen a white person violated an unspoken rule of
whiteness by actively opposing the states attempt to enforce
the color line, a transgression of the norms of whiteness that the
state took so seriously that Crooks was promptly incarcerated.
Why are such acts of race treason so threatening? Because the
enforcement of the color line is predicated on the belief that the
state can determine who is a friend and who is an enemy by the
color of their skin. By attacking the institutions of white supremacy
and flagrantly violating the norms of whiteness, the state would no
longer be able use white skin as reliable determiner of who is a
friend and who is a foe to the existing society, undermining the
separate deal that the white working class struck with capital.
Though white supremacy has driven a wedge within the American
working class, these social relationships are neither natural, nor
inevitable. It is the current result of historical contestations for
power. Simply putthe state and capital have been more
successful at institutionalizing white supremacy than we have
been in fighting it. The task ahead is to reverse that trend. As
activists, agitators, and revolutionaries, we neednt abandon
our anti-authoritarian vision. However, strategies for realizing that
vision need to be informed by an understanding of the intersection
of oppressions that have resulted from this societys particular
historical development. In the United States, focusing on white
supremacy does more to fight all forms of oppression than by
fighting them all simultaneously. When we refuse to
strategically prioritize our political work in response to historical
and structural conditions, we lose the struggle.
The A-Infos News Service
News about and of interest to anarchists
******
An anarchist veiw on MKING
by LEFTovermoldypizzacheez
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:21 PM
News about and of interest to anarchists
http://ainfos.ca/ http://ainfos.ca/index24.html
________________________________________________
When you get the white man over here in America and he says he's
white he means he's boss. -Malcolm X
One of the most compelling aspects of anarchism is its holistic
approach to human freedom. We are opposed to all forms of
domination and oppression is a phrase that appears almost
universally in every statement of purpose and political statement of
anarchist collectives and projects. This reflects anarchisms
total rejection of all forms of oppression and its belief that no one
oppression is the base or primary oppression upon which
all other oppressions rest. Racism or sexism could thrive in a
socialist society, and eradicating racism or sexism by no means
guarantees the eradication of capitalism or the state. Oppressions,
as the saying goes, are relatively autonomous. This is an important
insight that developed out of a critique of the crude class
reductionism of neo-Marxism and was often used as an excuse by
white, male leftists to not take the seriously the struggles for racial
justice, womens liberation, and queer liberation. However,
when pressed to develop this analysis further, anarchism falls
silent. Beyond recognizing this relative autonomy (and
thus the relative interconnectedness of various
oppressions), anarchism has failed to articulate precisely how
these oppressions interconnect in a way that is useful for
organizers. Predictably, this has hampered the capacity for
anarchists to effectively develop the analysis of society that is
needed to develop strategies for revolution.
Moral Equivalency, Strategic Hierarchy
For revolutionaries, it is not simply enough to oppose all forms of
authority and oppression; we need a plan for destroying them. If we
are to transform society, we must understand precisely how forms
of authority are related and determine where the weak points are
so we can develop effective strategies. An important step in
developing a strategy is the recognition that while oppressions are
morally equivalent, strategically they are not. Many organizers
implicitly accept this notion in practiceat least when it comes
to systems of authority other than race, class, gender, and sexual
orientation. Anarchists who do community organizing on a regular
basis know the importance of working with religious
institutionschurches, mosques, and synagoguesin any
organizing effort. They do this despite anarchisms opposition
to religious forms of authority. To use just one example, in the
immediate aftermath of September 11th, anarchists from across
the country, clad in their black No Gods, No Masters
t-shirts, began working closely with Muslim groups and mosques in
their cities in order to assist Arab and Muslim communities with
self-defense efforts. Clearly this was the correct thing to do and
consciously or not, reflected an assessment by anarchists that
defending Muslims from attacks by racists and the state takes a
strategic priority over anarchisms (largely philosophical and
ideological) opposition to forms religious authority. A second
important step in developing a strategy is the recognition that
oppressions connect in ways particular to the historical context
and social forces in which they develop. The relationships between
race, class, and gender in one country are likely to be quite
different than it is in another, and therefore the strategies for
destroying them will also be different. The U.S.s rather unique
history of racial slavery and segregation have made white
supremacy central to the functioning of America in a way it
hasnt in others societies. Activists must understand the ways
that the particular historical experiences of the United States wove
race and class together that makes fighting white supremacy
central to any revolutionary project. In other words, those who
wish to fight against all forms of authoritarianism must understand
one crucial fact of American politicsin America authority is
colored white.
The White Shadow
In the United States, one cannot escape the importance of race.
Anyone familiar with the literature of critical race theory already
knows this basic truth: that race is a social construct with no
biological basis. Though biologically race is fiction, it is
still a social reality. Race is a signifier of social, legal, economic,
and political value (or lack thereof) in America. White supremacy
casts a long shadow over American society and colors more than
just the consciousness of white folks. It has institutionalized white
privilege in political institutions, the courts, schools, and labor
unions to name just a few. The state not only legitimates these
privileges, it also actively enforces them in the back rooms,
through public policy, and in the frontlines, through police, prisons,
and jails. American society grants real and significant material and
psychological benefits to those defined as white.
One of the affects of these benefits has been that the white
working class has identified its interests with the white ruling
class and not with the rest of the working class; this has
effectively driven a wedge within the working classa fact
illustrated every time a real estate agent steers a Black
family to a Black neighborhood and every time a bus driver made
Black folks sit in the back of the bus. In order to seriously
challenge the existing system, this wedge must be removed. A
successful, anti-authoritarian revolution in American can be
engendered by a revolutionary crisis in the institutions of white
supremacy. As happened during Reconstruction and the Civil
Rights Movement, attacks against institutions of white supremacy
generated such a crisis and opened up political space for
movements to attack not only racial oppression, but also all forms
of domination. In the case of Reconstruction, the United States
was brought to the brink of a social revolution, the first wave of
feminism emerged from the abolitionist struggles, and queer
liberation, AIM and countless other struggles for freedom emerged
on the heels of the Civil Rights movement. The lesson learned here
should be clear: a strategic orientation to the destruction of white
supremacy does NOT violate the anarchist opposition to all forms
of oppression, rather it fulfills the potential of their
anti-authoritarian vision.
White Abolitionism as a Strategy for Revolution
When Donovan Jackson, a Black youth, was brutally beaten by a
white police officer in Inglewood, California last summer, the
incident was caught on videotape by Mitchell Crooks, who is
white. A revealing twist to this incident lies in the fact that the
first two people arrested in connection with this incident were
Jackson, the Black victim, and Crooks, the white man whose
videotape exposed the police brutality. In this moment we see
enforcement of the color line by the state twice: first in the all too
common form of police abuse in the Black community and secondly
in the form of the harsh retribution against the person who exposed
one instance of that abuse. Crookss act was an instance of
race treasonwhen a white person violated an unspoken rule of
whiteness by actively opposing the states attempt to enforce
the color line, a transgression of the norms of whiteness that the
state took so seriously that Crooks was promptly incarcerated.
Why are such acts of race treason so threatening? Because the
enforcement of the color line is predicated on the belief that the
state can determine who is a friend and who is an enemy by the
color of their skin. By attacking the institutions of white supremacy
and flagrantly violating the norms of whiteness, the state would no
longer be able use white skin as reliable determiner of who is a
friend and who is a foe to the existing society, undermining the
separate deal that the white working class struck with capital.
Though white supremacy has driven a wedge within the American
working class, these social relationships are neither natural, nor
inevitable. It is the current result of historical contestations for
power. Simply putthe state and capital have been more
successful at institutionalizing white supremacy than we have
been in fighting it. The task ahead is to reverse that trend. As
activists, agitators, and revolutionaries, we neednt abandon
our anti-authoritarian vision. However, strategies for realizing that
vision need to be informed by an understanding of the intersection
of oppressions that have resulted from this societys particular
historical development. In the United States, focusing on white
supremacy does more to fight all forms of oppression than by
fighting them all simultaneously. When we refuse to
strategically prioritize our political work in response to historical
and structural conditions, we lose the struggle.
The A-Infos News Service
News about and of interest to anarchists
******
An anarchist veiw on MKING
by LEFTovermoldypizzacheez
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:21 PM
News about and of interest to anarchists
http://ainfos.ca/ http://ainfos.ca/index24.html
________________________________________________
When you get the white man over here in America and he says he's
white he means he's boss. -Malcolm X
One of the most compelling aspects of anarchism is its holistic
approach to human freedom. We are opposed to all forms of
domination and oppression is a phrase that appears almost
universally in every statement of purpose and political statement of
anarchist collectives and projects. This reflects anarchisms
total rejection of all forms of oppression and its belief that no one
oppression is the base or primary oppression upon which
all other oppressions rest. Racism or sexism could thrive in a
socialist society, and eradicating racism or sexism by no means
guarantees the eradication of capitalism or the state. Oppressions,
as the saying goes, are relatively autonomous. This is an important
insight that developed out of a critique of the crude class
reductionism of neo-Marxism and was often used as an excuse by
white, male leftists to not take the seriously the struggles for racial
justice, womens liberation, and queer liberation. However,
when pressed to develop this analysis further, anarchism falls
silent. Beyond recognizing this relative autonomy (and
thus the relative interconnectedness of various
oppressions), anarchism has failed to articulate precisely how
these oppressions interconnect in a way that is useful for
organizers. Predictably, this has hampered the capacity for
anarchists to effectively develop the analysis of society that is
needed to develop strategies for revolution.
Moral Equivalency, Strategic Hierarchy
For revolutionaries, it is not simply enough to oppose all forms of
authority and oppression; we need a plan for destroying them. If we
are to transform society, we must understand precisely how forms
of authority are related and determine where the weak points are
so we can develop effective strategies. An important step in
developing a strategy is the recognition that while oppressions are
morally equivalent, strategically they are not. Many organizers
implicitly accept this notion in practiceat least when it comes
to systems of authority other than race, class, gender, and sexual
orientation. Anarchists who do community organizing on a regular
basis know the importance of working with religious
institutionschurches, mosques, and synagoguesin any
organizing effort. They do this despite anarchisms opposition
to religious forms of authority. To use just one example, in the
immediate aftermath of September 11th, anarchists from across
the country, clad in their black No Gods, No Masters
t-shirts, began working closely with Muslim groups and mosques in
their cities in order to assist Arab and Muslim communities with
self-defense efforts. Clearly this was the correct thing to do and
consciously or not, reflected an assessment by anarchists that
defending Muslims from attacks by racists and the state takes a
strategic priority over anarchisms (largely philosophical and
ideological) opposition to forms religious authority. A second
important step in developing a strategy is the recognition that
oppressions connect in ways particular to the historical context
and social forces in which they develop. The relationships between
race, class, and gender in one country are likely to be quite
different than it is in another, and therefore the strategies for
destroying them will also be different. The U.S.s rather unique
history of racial slavery and segregation have made white
supremacy central to the functioning of America in a way it
hasnt in others societies. Activists must understand the ways
that the particular historical experiences of the United States wove
race and class together that makes fighting white supremacy
central to any revolutionary project. In other words, those who
wish to fight against all forms of authoritarianism must understand
one crucial fact of American politicsin America authority is
colored white.
The White Shadow
In the United States, one cannot escape the importance of race.
Anyone familiar with the literature of critical race theory already
knows this basic truth: that race is a social construct with no
biological basis. Though biologically race is fiction, it is
still a social reality. Race is a signifier of social, legal, economic,
and political value (or lack thereof) in America. White supremacy
casts a long shadow over American society and colors more than
just the consciousness of white folks. It has institutionalized white
privilege in political institutions, the courts, schools, and labor
unions to name just a few. The state not only legitimates these
privileges, it also actively enforces them in the back rooms,
through public policy, and in the frontlines, through police, prisons,
and jails. American society grants real and significant material and
psychological benefits to those defined as white.
One of the affects of these benefits has been that the white
working class has identified its interests with the white ruling
class and not with the rest of the working class; this has
effectively driven a wedge within the working classa fact
illustrated every time a real estate agent steers a Black
family to a Black neighborhood and every time a bus driver made
Black folks sit in the back of the bus. In order to seriously
challenge the existing system, this wedge must be removed. A
successful, anti-authoritarian revolution in American can be
engendered by a revolutionary crisis in the institutions of white
supremacy. As happened during Reconstruction and the Civil
Rights Movement, attacks against institutions of white supremacy
generated such a crisis and opened up political space for
movements to attack not only racial oppression, but also all forms
of domination. In the case of Reconstruction, the United States
was brought to the brink of a social revolution, the first wave of
feminism emerged from the abolitionist struggles, and queer
liberation, AIM and countless other struggles for freedom emerged
on the heels of the Civil Rights movement. The lesson learned here
should be clear: a strategic orientation to the destruction of white
supremacy does NOT violate the anarchist opposition to all forms
of oppression, rather it fulfills the potential of their
anti-authoritarian vision.
White Abolitionism as a Strategy for Revolution
When Donovan Jackson, a Black youth, was brutally beaten by a
white police officer in Inglewood, California last summer, the
incident was caught on videotape by Mitchell Crooks, who is
white. A revealing twist to this incident lies in the fact that the
first two people arrested in connection with this incident were
Jackson, the Black victim, and Crooks, the white man whose
videotape exposed the police brutality. In this moment we see
enforcement of the color line by the state twice: first in the all too
common form of police abuse in the Black community and secondly
in the form of the harsh retribution against the person who exposed
one instance of that abuse. Crookss act was an instance of
race treasonwhen a white person violated an unspoken rule of
whiteness by actively opposing the states attempt to enforce
the color line, a transgression of the norms of whiteness that the
state took so seriously that Crooks was promptly incarcerated.
Why are such acts of race treason so threatening? Because the
enforcement of the color line is predicated on the belief that the
state can determine who is a friend and who is an enemy by the
color of their skin. By attacking the institutions of white supremacy
and flagrantly violating the norms of whiteness, the state would no
longer be able use white skin as reliable determiner of who is a
friend and who is a foe to the existing society, undermining the
separate deal that the white working class struck with capital.
Though white supremacy has driven a wedge within the American
working class, these social relationships are neither natural, nor
inevitable. It is the current result of historical contestations for
power. Simply putthe state and capital have been more
successful at institutionalizing white supremacy than we have
been in fighting it. The task ahead is to reverse that trend. As
activists, agitators, and revolutionaries, we neednt abandon
our anti-authoritarian vision. However, strategies for realizing that
vision need to be informed by an understanding of the intersection
of oppressions that have resulted from this societys particular
historical development. In the United States, focusing on white
supremacy does more to fight all forms of oppression than by
fighting them all simultaneously. When we refuse to
strategically prioritize our political work in response to historical
and structural conditions, we lose the struggle.
The A-Infos News Service
News about and of interest to anarchists
******
The good samaritans latest article
by guardian UK
Tuesday, Jan. 06, 2004 at 2:24 PM
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Monday January 5, 2004
The Guardian
The retrial starts today of a former police officer accused of assaulting a black teenager by slamming him on to the boot of a police car, an encounter caught on video and broadcast around the world.
But 18 months after the alleged attack in Inglewood, at the edge of Los Angeles, the only person involved who has been sent to jail is the man who shot the video, who has been accused of being a "race traitor" for exposing what took place.
Mitchell Crooks, a 29-year-old actor, DJ and video-maker, was staying at a backpackers' hostel in Inglewood on July 6 2002 when he heard someone shouting "stop hurting him". He ran outside and started filming.
The images in the car park of a petrol station he captured of Donovan Jackson, 16 at the time, led to a charge of assault against Jeremy Morse, who is to appear in court today. A jury was unable to reach a decision at the officer's first trial in July.
"I don't regret doing what I did," Mr Crooks told the Guardian. "You have to do the right thing regardless of what the consequences."
Mr Crooks, who is from Sacramento and had lived in Los Angeles for four years, saw footage from his two-minute video broadcast on every US news network.
The alleged assault has been likened to the beating of Rodney King by four LA police officers, which was captured on video and led to the prosecution of the officers. Their acquittal in 1992 led to the LA riots in which 55 people died.
Inglewood police were aware someone had shot a video and searched the hotel for it. Mr Crooks said Australian and New Zealander backpackers staying there knew he had the footage but did not reveal his identity, so he was able to get it out to the media. He was arrested outside the CNN offices in LA.
"There was a warrant out for my arrest in connection with drunk driving, hit and run, and petty theft," Mr Crooks said. "I'm not making excuses but it was a fender-bender type of accident and I had pawned a VCR that belonged to me, but they made me look like I was the next worst person to Osama bin Laden.
"I had just arranged by phone with a friend to meet me there with the video so they must have tapped the phones."
Mr Crooks, a slim white man who says his experience has made him more politically involved, said: "I was flown by private jet to Placer county. For my sins, I was put in an all-white jail in an all-white county. It turned ugly real quick for me. I did six months in jail - that's what I owed them - and it was a rough six months.
"I was under lockdown 22 hours a day. There were no minorities in jail and some of the other inmates were saying I was a race traitor and throwing it in my face an awful lot."
After his arrest, he said, interest in the actions of Mr Morse, then 25, dwindled. "The media stop paying attention after they're told that you're a criminal."
After the jury failed to reach a verdict on Mr Morse Mr Crooks joined Inglewood community groups to appeal for calm, as prosecutors were accused of mounting a weak case. One of their witnesses, Commander Charles Heal of the LA county sheriff's department, had told the court he did not think a criminal charge was justified. Another police officer, charged with a lesser offence, was acquitted.
Mr Morse and the other officer are suing the city of Inglewood, claiming they were victims of racial discrimination, having been treated more harshly than a black officer also at the scene, who was suspended for four days.
Mr Crooks, meanwhile, is looking forward to the retrial. "Rodney King was not an isolated incident," he said. "Cops are very afraid of cameras - for good reason. Sometimes I think the situation is a little heavy but that goes with the territory."
Because of his incarceration, he did not meet Donovan Jackson until the last trial. "I got to meet the family a bit later. They have been real sweet." Mr Jackson, who has learning difficulties, is being represented by the high-profile lawyer Johnny Cochran in a civil action against the police.
The selection of the jury starts today. In last year's trial there was only one black juror, from what is a 50% black neighbourhood.
truth about indymedia troll mking
by MC
Wednesday, Jan. 07, 2004 at 7:32 AM
dscf0227_1.jpg, image/jpeg, 1440x960
Mking brought this on himself,
with his "Ilove police brutality"
and hate niggers hate speech.
I came here to spread awareness
over the case before a court now.
At some point, several emails from
mking_usa@yahoo.com
came threatening me to
"Shut up or die" and that
"if I am to continue to speak out
against police I will suffer
unimaginably at the hands of crist". ect. ect. ect.
I came to Clevland/cincinnati
to work with the community there
about what to do in cases of
police brutality. Spoke to the people
involved and posted my case on indymedia.
This Mking starts to go all over the net
and post lies and hate nonsense
on all my articles all over the web.
Several emails from Mking were
"PINGed" back to the same IP number.???????
As my debate with this nuckleheaded,
loser, chickenhawk, racist began,
He continued sponging off my celebrity?
a mysterious letter shows up at my
lawyers offices (the only ones with
contact addresses available on the net,
since I blocked the ip from Mkings
dial up modem) with powder in it.
A threat? A coincidence?
I have gone to other articles on the
net about these vicious rumors and hate
MKing has spread. When told of the
address by investigators that the
envelope comes from central ohio
I told them of this guy who has an
infatuation towards me and expressed
his hatred for the community work I did
over the recent beating in cincinnati
and in inglewood.
I then find that this fuckin psycho
motherfucker has broke into my server
and email accounts. All coming from
the same IP. The last threatening
email I got at another email account
matched servers and IP# back to the
same as the Yahoo email miking uses.
This man has serious issues.
I think he is the type to go bomb
churches and synagoges mosques and abortion clinics.
Some of the hate he spreads is ridiculous.
Over a videotaping of a 16 year old
handicapped black innocent child.??????
I would think the guy would be happy
enough that I went to jail over the issue
but apparently NOT! Then he has
dedicated his time and resources
towards defaming, threatening and
sponging off me and the fame
I have created in my personel
and social causes. Tell you the
truth I don't read anything he says
cause I know its a lie.
Just like his leader hitler,
I mean dubya. (lol)
MOVEON.org
WE are taking this issue very
seriously and I have had my friends
come to cleveland IMC to post up
about the donovan jackson beating
and others just to show that intimidation
and lies and defamation of a character
is not going to win. mr mking is a
psychopathic nutcase.
I am going to defend what I have done.
Like I should.
What he does not realize,
is he is only helping my case
by pointing out how much he
hates blacks and liberal activists
that he would threaten violence
and take it upon himself to comb
the net sponging off my good deed.
Shit HE is doing the work for me.
A smart opposition to myself or
position would to not ignore it
or, don'tread my posts or respond
but this hate filled "republican"
cop loving dipshit can't see that.
Hey man the people I am trying
to reach see "RIGHT" thru that
mentality and bullshit. Eventually bush
will end up in prison for LYING about
sending the troops to fight a bogus war
killing innocents. He is allready caught.
He is lying his way out of it now. like mking_usa@yahoo.com
I agree the issue is about justice
for donovan jackson and should
be that but this dipshit cant and
won't let it go. He is that stupid
that he can't even realize that?
This guy had to have been so
angry about my posts on
"his supposed website" .
Yeah IMC was created for
nazi right wing liar trolls
trying their PSY-OPS techniques
on the opposition. Whatever man?
Why don't you go away MKing.
You will never silence the voice of the voiceless.
long history of police abuse by morse
by Jeffrey Anderson
Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004 at 4:54 PM
Under the Rug in Inglewood
A judge wants to seal a settlement in a police-brutality case
by Jeffrey Anderson
Fired Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse appears to be District Attorney Steve Cooley�s problem for now, as prosecutors prepare to retry him on brutality charges in the videotaped beating of teenager Donovan Jackson. Critical mistakes by prosecutors ended with a hung jury last July.
But Morse is also Inglewood�s problem. Costly civil settlements, attorneys� fees and civil rights lawsuits charging illegal law-enforcement practices continue to plague city officials, who cleared Morse despite repeated complaints for more than two years before the Jackson incident in 2002 forced them to fire him.
One federal civil rights case in particular offers a glimpse into the city�s attempts, and a federal judge�s willingness, to keep Morse and a rash of citizen complaints below the radar. �I went to court, because for the first time I thought someone was listening,� says Patricia Surjue, her voice trembling more than two years after her run-in with Morse. She is referring to a settlement hearing before U.S. District Judge James Otero on October 23. �The court should be a place where dignity is not marred. Yet it seems like a business for everyone involved.�
According to a transcript of the hearing, Surjue agreed that day to settle her lawsuit against the city for $470,000 � more than half of which goes to her lawyers. However, she says she settled under duress after informing her lawyers and the judge she wanted a public trial. The city of Inglewood, which has yet to approve public funds for the settlement, wants her to sign a confidentiality agreement that prevents her from speaking publicly, her lawyer says. Inglewood interim city attorney Emmerline Foote did not return calls for comment.
But Surjue has refused to sign, although the hearing transcript offers Otero the authority to execute the settlement based on her verbal agreement. �When I turned to the law, I was told to keep quiet,� Surjue says, disappointed in her own attorneys and dissatisfied with the process. �I was paralyzed out of fear. I�m supposed to challenge this judge, who was appointed by the president?� Otero did not return calls for comment.
On the night of October 20, 2001, Surjue was in her bedroom on the second floor of her Inglewood apartment when there was a knock at the door. Officers Morse and Bijan Darvish were there. It was time for Surjue�s ex-husband, Steven Surjue, to pick up one of their two sons for his visitation, and he had called the police. Just a day earlier, a different pair of Inglewood officers had visited Surjue at her home without incident in response to complaints from her ex-husband that she was not respecting his visitation rights.
Surjue, 39, is a U.S citizen born in Jamaica. She works for the Department of Homeland Security as an adjudication officer reviewing requests for benefits sought under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Steven Surjue is in the U.S. Army and is now stationed in Iraq.
According to both the police report from that night and Surjue�s complaint filed in U.S. District Court in August 2002, her oldest son, Stephen, age 12 at the time, answered the door and told the officers his mother was asleep. While he went upstairs to wake her, Morse and Darvish entered the apartment.
Surjue�s version of events, which is contained in Judge Otero�s order of September 2 granting summary judgment in her favor, states that as she came down the stairs, she asked Morse and Darvish what they were doing in her house. Her reaction prompted Morse to push her son aside and rush up the stairs toward her, her complaint states. Surjue further alleges that Morse grabbed her forcefully, threw his body weight against her and twisted her arm as he shoved her down the stairs. Otero ruled that Morse and Darvish illegally entered Surjue�s home and illegally seized her in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the California Constitution.
On October 23, he then ordered the city of Inglewood to pay $470,000 to settle the case, which is not yet final. As is usually the case in police-misconduct cases, the city successfully sought Otero�s order to seal a number of documents pertaining to its internal investigation of Morse and Darvish.
The police report signed by Darvish on October 20, 2001, states that Surjue was aggressively flailing her arms and that Morse used a �firm grip� as he escorted her down the stairs. In a declaration filed with the court, Darvish later stated that �Morse lost his grip of Surjue�s arm as she continued to swing her arms. Officer Morse then grabbed Ms. Surjue�s wrists and, out of concern for our safety, the safety of her children and the safety of Ms. Surjue herself, she was handcuffed.� (Darvish was charged in 2002 with filing a false police report in the Donovan Jackson case. He was acquitted last July and remains on the Inglewood force. The same jury deadlocked 7-5 on whether Morse was guilty of excessive force.)
Surjue, who is 5-foot-5 and weighs 125 pounds, told the court she received blunt trauma to her back, buttocks, chest and stomach. She claims that her children were forced to witness her in handcuffs for an hour until Inglewood Sergeant Dennis Brown, a defendant in the case, arrived and searched her house for guns.
Morse at one point was so close to her face, as he allegedly told her to �shut up,� that he spit on her as he told her he didn�t care if �she were the president of the United States; she was going to jail,� according to Surjue�s statement filed with the court on October 16.
According to Surjue�s damage claim, in addition to humiliation and emotional trauma, she suffered a fractured coccyx and has become incontinent. Her children, including the youngest, Gareth, age 5 at the time, an asthma sufferer, remain traumatized, she claims.
�I raise my children to be supportive of the police,� Surjue says. �I never in all my life walked in front of the law. But how can I get my children to adhere to the laws of society after this? What am I to tell a child who sees police on the side of the road and fears for the safety of the person they have stopped?�
After the incident, Surjue was treated in the emergency room at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital and went to the Inglewood police station. There, she said Watch Commander John Knapp, also a co-defendant, told her to go home and forget the whole incident, before reluctantly giving her an officer-complaint form to fill out and advising her to return it only to him, as others would dispose of it.
�I felt like a cockroach,� Surjue says.
By the time the Donovan Jackson case made headlines in July 2002, Surjue had hired Mann & Cook. The law firm submitted a formal complaint to Police Chief Ronald Banks, another defendant, along with Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, on February 6, 2002. On January 28, 2003, Banks informed Surjue that her complaint was unfounded.
His finding was one of 11 such findings by the Inglewood Police Internal Affairs Division regarding complaints against Morse in the 31 months before the Jackson incident, according to documents filed in federal court, which describe complaints ranging from excessive force to harassment to false arrest.
Meantime, according to co-counsel Cynthia Anderson-Barker, the Los Angeles County District Attorney�s Office interviewed Surjue and her oldest son in connection with its investigation of the Jackson incident. Surjue �cooperated fully,� Anderson-Barker says. Yet no criminal charges were brought against Morse for allegedly abusing Surjue.
Surjue says a civil rights lawsuit was her only way to find justice. �I was hoping my case would pave the way to justice for people who because of their social class or economic situation are not believed.�
Once in court, Surjue was disappointed with the way she was treated. First of all, she does not want to remain silent. Anderson-Barker says she has asked the court to lift a confidentiality provision contained in the settlement agreement. She declined to comment further.
But Surjue also wants the public to hear what she has been through. �I urinate on myself,� she says. �I want to be able to stand up and say that�s what [Morse] did to me.�
Above all, she says she worries for her safety in Inglewood and that of her children. She would like to be able to afford to move them, but the settlement she has been offered � $15,000 for each child earmarked for college tuition, $190,000 for her, $250,000 for her attorneys � just won�t cut it, she says.
�I want to take my children out of the place where they were traumatized,� she says. �The concerns I have for my children seem secondary to getting this case off someone�s calendar.�
unite the many,
defeat the few!
long history of police abuse by morse
by Jeffrey Anderson
Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004 at 4:55 PM
Under the Rug in Inglewood
A judge wants to seal a settlement in a police-brutality case
by Jeffrey Anderson
Fired Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse appears to be District Attorney Steve Cooley�s problem for now, as prosecutors prepare to retry him on brutality charges in the videotaped beating of teenager Donovan Jackson. Critical mistakes by prosecutors ended with a hung jury last July.
But Morse is also Inglewood�s problem. Costly civil settlements, attorneys� fees and civil rights lawsuits charging illegal law-enforcement practices continue to plague city officials, who cleared Morse despite repeated complaints for more than two years before the Jackson incident in 2002 forced them to fire him.
One federal civil rights case in particular offers a glimpse into the city�s attempts, and a federal judge�s willingness, to keep Morse and a rash of citizen complaints below the radar. �I went to court, because for the first time I thought someone was listening,� says Patricia Surjue, her voice trembling more than two years after her run-in with Morse. She is referring to a settlement hearing before U.S. District Judge James Otero on October 23. �The court should be a place where dignity is not marred. Yet it seems like a business for everyone involved.�
According to a transcript of the hearing, Surjue agreed that day to settle her lawsuit against the city for $470,000 � more than half of which goes to her lawyers. However, she says she settled under duress after informing her lawyers and the judge she wanted a public trial. The city of Inglewood, which has yet to approve public funds for the settlement, wants her to sign a confidentiality agreement that prevents her from speaking publicly, her lawyer says. Inglewood interim city attorney Emmerline Foote did not return calls for comment.
But Surjue has refused to sign, although the hearing transcript offers Otero the authority to execute the settlement based on her verbal agreement. �When I turned to the law, I was told to keep quiet,� Surjue says, disappointed in her own attorneys and dissatisfied with the process. �I was paralyzed out of fear. I�m supposed to challenge this judge, who was appointed by the president?� Otero did not return calls for comment.
On the night of October 20, 2001, Surjue was in her bedroom on the second floor of her Inglewood apartment when there was a knock at the door. Officers Morse and Bijan Darvish were there. It was time for Surjue�s ex-husband, Steven Surjue, to pick up one of their two sons for his visitation, and he had called the police. Just a day earlier, a different pair of Inglewood officers had visited Surjue at her home without incident in response to complaints from her ex-husband that she was not respecting his visitation rights.
Surjue, 39, is a U.S citizen born in Jamaica. She works for the Department of Homeland Security as an adjudication officer reviewing requests for benefits sought under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Steven Surjue is in the U.S. Army and is now stationed in Iraq.
According to both the police report from that night and Surjue�s complaint filed in U.S. District Court in August 2002, her oldest son, Stephen, age 12 at the time, answered the door and told the officers his mother was asleep. While he went upstairs to wake her, Morse and Darvish entered the apartment.
Surjue�s version of events, which is contained in Judge Otero�s order of September 2 granting summary judgment in her favor, states that as she came down the stairs, she asked Morse and Darvish what they were doing in her house. Her reaction prompted Morse to push her son aside and rush up the stairs toward her, her complaint states. Surjue further alleges that Morse grabbed her forcefully, threw his body weight against her and twisted her arm as he shoved her down the stairs. Otero ruled that Morse and Darvish illegally entered Surjue�s home and illegally seized her in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the California Constitution.
On October 23, he then ordered the city of Inglewood to pay $470,000 to settle the case, which is not yet final. As is usually the case in police-misconduct cases, the city successfully sought Otero�s order to seal a number of documents pertaining to its internal investigation of Morse and Darvish.
The police report signed by Darvish on October 20, 2001, states that Surjue was aggressively flailing her arms and that Morse used a �firm grip� as he escorted her down the stairs. In a declaration filed with the court, Darvish later stated that �Morse lost his grip of Surjue�s arm as she continued to swing her arms. Officer Morse then grabbed Ms. Surjue�s wrists and, out of concern for our safety, the safety of her children and the safety of Ms. Surjue herself, she was handcuffed.� (Darvish was charged in 2002 with filing a false police report in the Donovan Jackson case. He was acquitted last July and remains on the Inglewood force. The same jury deadlocked 7-5 on whether Morse was guilty of excessive force.)
Surjue, who is 5-foot-5 and weighs 125 pounds, told the court she received blunt trauma to her back, buttocks, chest and stomach. She claims that her children were forced to witness her in handcuffs for an hour until Inglewood Sergeant Dennis Brown, a defendant in the case, arrived and searched her house for guns.
Morse at one point was so close to her face, as he allegedly told her to �shut up,� that he spit on her as he told her he didn�t care if �she were the president of the United States; she was going to jail,� according to Surjue�s statement filed with the court on October 16.
According to Surjue�s damage claim, in addition to humiliation and emotional trauma, she suffered a fractured coccyx and has become incontinent. Her children, including the youngest, Gareth, age 5 at the time, an asthma sufferer, remain traumatized, she claims.
�I raise my children to be supportive of the police,� Surjue says. �I never in all my life walked in front of the law. But how can I get my children to adhere to the laws of society after this? What am I to tell a child who sees police on the side of the road and fears for the safety of the person they have stopped?�
After the incident, Surjue was treated in the emergency room at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital and went to the Inglewood police station. There, she said Watch Commander John Knapp, also a co-defendant, told her to go home and forget the whole incident, before reluctantly giving her an officer-complaint form to fill out and advising her to return it only to him, as others would dispose of it.
�I felt like a cockroach,� Surjue says.
By the time the Donovan Jackson case made headlines in July 2002, Surjue had hired Mann & Cook. The law firm submitted a formal complaint to Police Chief Ronald Banks, another defendant, along with Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, on February 6, 2002. On January 28, 2003, Banks informed Surjue that her complaint was unfounded.
His finding was one of 11 such findings by the Inglewood Police Internal Affairs Division regarding complaints against Morse in the 31 months before the Jackson incident, according to documents filed in federal court, which describe complaints ranging from excessive force to harassment to false arrest.
Meantime, according to co-counsel Cynthia Anderson-Barker, the Los Angeles County District Attorney�s Office interviewed Surjue and her oldest son in connection with its investigation of the Jackson incident. Surjue �cooperated fully,� Anderson-Barker says. Yet no criminal charges were brought against Morse for allegedly abusing Surjue.
Surjue says a civil rights lawsuit was her only way to find justice. �I was hoping my case would pave the way to justice for people who because of their social class or economic situation are not believed.�
Once in court, Surjue was disappointed with the way she was treated. First of all, she does not want to remain silent. Anderson-Barker says she has asked the court to lift a confidentiality provision contained in the settlement agreement. She declined to comment further.
But Surjue also wants the public to hear what she has been through. �I urinate on myself,� she says. �I want to be able to stand up and say that�s what [Morse] did to me.�
Above all, she says she worries for her safety in Inglewood and that of her children. She would like to be able to afford to move them, but the settlement she has been offered � $15,000 for each child earmarked for college tuition, $190,000 for her, $250,000 for her attorneys � just won�t cut it, she says.
�I want to take my children out of the place where they were traumatized,� she says. �The concerns I have for my children seem secondary to getting this case off someone�s calendar.�
unite the many,
defeat the few!
long history of police abuse by morse
by Jeffrey Anderson
Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004 at 4:56 PM
Under the Rug in Inglewood
A judge wants to seal a settlement in a police-brutality case
by Jeffrey Anderson
Fired Inglewood Police Officer Jeremy Morse appears to be District Attorney Steve Cooley�s problem for now, as prosecutors prepare to retry him on brutality charges in the videotaped beating of teenager Donovan Jackson. Critical mistakes by prosecutors ended with a hung jury last July.
But Morse is also Inglewood�s problem. Costly civil settlements, attorneys� fees and civil rights lawsuits charging illegal law-enforcement practices continue to plague city officials, who cleared Morse despite repeated complaints for more than two years before the Jackson incident in 2002 forced them to fire him.
One federal civil rights case in particular offers a glimpse into the city�s attempts, and a federal judge�s willingness, to keep Morse and a rash of citizen complaints below the radar. �I went to court, because for the first time I thought someone was listening,� says Patricia Surjue, her voice trembling more than two years after her run-in with Morse. She is referring to a settlement hearing before U.S. District Judge James Otero on October 23. �The court should be a place where dignity is not marred. Yet it seems like a business for everyone involved.�
According to a transcript of the hearing, Surjue agreed that day to settle her lawsuit against the city for $470,000 � more than half of which goes to her lawyers. However, she says she settled under duress after informing her lawyers and the judge she wanted a public trial. The city of Inglewood, which has yet to approve public funds for the settlement, wants her to sign a confidentiality agreement that prevents her from speaking publicly, her lawyer says. Inglewood interim city attorney Emmerline Foote did not return calls for comment.
But Surjue has refused to sign, although the hearing transcript offers Otero the authority to execute the settlement based on her verbal agreement. �When I turned to the law, I was told to keep quiet,� Surjue says, disappointed in her own attorneys and dissatisfied with the process. �I was paralyzed out of fear. I�m supposed to challenge this judge, who was appointed by the president?� Otero did not return calls for comment.
On the night of October 20, 2001, Surjue was in her bedroom on the second floor of her Inglewood apartment when there was a knock at the door. Officers Morse and Bijan Darvish were there. It was time for Surjue�s ex-husband, Steven Surjue, to pick up one of their two sons for his visitation, and he had called the police. Just a day earlier, a different pair of Inglewood officers had visited Surjue at her home without incident in response to complaints from her ex-husband that she was not respecting his visitation rights.
Surjue, 39, is a U.S citizen born in Jamaica. She works for the Department of Homeland Security as an adjudication officer reviewing requests for benefits sought under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Steven Surjue is in the U.S. Army and is now stationed in Iraq.
According to both the police report from that night and Surjue�s complaint filed in U.S. District Court in August 2002, her oldest son, Stephen, age 12 at the time, answered the door and told the officers his mother was asleep. While he went upstairs to wake her, Morse and Darvish entered the apartment.
Surjue�s version of events, which is contained in Judge Otero�s order of September 2 granting summary judgment in her favor, states that as she came down the stairs, she asked Morse and Darvish what they were doing in her house. Her reaction prompted Morse to push her son aside and rush up the stairs toward her, her complaint states. Surjue further alleges that Morse grabbed her forcefully, threw his body weight against her and twisted her arm as he shoved her down the stairs. Otero ruled that Morse and Darvish illegally entered Surjue�s home and illegally seized her in violation of the Fourth Amendment and the California Constitution.
On October 23, he then ordered the city of Inglewood to pay $470,000 to settle the case, which is not yet final. As is usually the case in police-misconduct cases, the city successfully sought Otero�s order to seal a number of documents pertaining to its internal investigation of Morse and Darvish.
The police report signed by Darvish on October 20, 2001, states that Surjue was aggressively flailing her arms and that Morse used a �firm grip� as he escorted her down the stairs. In a declaration filed with the court, Darvish later stated that �Morse lost his grip of Surjue�s arm as she continued to swing her arms. Officer Morse then grabbed Ms. Surjue�s wrists and, out of concern for our safety, the safety of her children and the safety of Ms. Surjue herself, she was handcuffed.� (Darvish was charged in 2002 with filing a false police report in the Donovan Jackson case. He was acquitted last July and remains on the Inglewood force. The same jury deadlocked 7-5 on whether Morse was guilty of excessive force.)
Surjue, who is 5-foot-5 and weighs 125 pounds, told the court she received blunt trauma to her back, buttocks, chest and stomach. She claims that her children were forced to witness her in handcuffs for an hour until Inglewood Sergeant Dennis Brown, a defendant in the case, arrived and searched her house for guns.
Morse at one point was so close to her face, as he allegedly told her to �shut up,� that he spit on her as he told her he didn�t care if �she were the president of the United States; she was going to jail,� according to Surjue�s statement filed with the court on October 16.
According to Surjue�s damage claim, in addition to humiliation and emotional trauma, she suffered a fractured coccyx and has become incontinent. Her children, including the youngest, Gareth, age 5 at the time, an asthma sufferer, remain traumatized, she claims.
�I raise my children to be supportive of the police,� Surjue says. �I never in all my life walked in front of the law. But how can I get my children to adhere to the laws of society after this? What am I to tell a child who sees police on the side of the road and fears for the safety of the person they have stopped?�
After the incident, Surjue was treated in the emergency room at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital and went to the Inglewood police station. There, she said Watch Commander John Knapp, also a co-defendant, told her to go home and forget the whole incident, before reluctantly giving her an officer-complaint form to fill out and advising her to return it only to him, as others would dispose of it.
�I felt like a cockroach,� Surjue says.
By the time the Donovan Jackson case made headlines in July 2002, Surjue had hired Mann & Cook. The law firm submitted a formal complaint to Police Chief Ronald Banks, another defendant, along with Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, on February 6, 2002. On January 28, 2003, Banks informed Surjue that her complaint was unfounded.
His finding was one of 11 such findings by the Inglewood Police Internal Affairs Division regarding complaints against Morse in the 31 months before the Jackson incident, according to documents filed in federal court, which describe complaints ranging from excessive force to harassment to false arrest.
Meantime, according to co-counsel Cynthia Anderson-Barker, the Los Angeles County District Attorney�s Office interviewed Surjue and her oldest son in connection with its investigation of the Jackson incident. Surjue �cooperated fully,� Anderson-Barker says. Yet no criminal charges were brought against Morse for allegedly abusing Surjue.
Surjue says a civil rights lawsuit was her only way to find justice. �I was hoping my case would pave the way to justice for people who because of their social class or economic situation are not believed.�
Once in court, Surjue was disappointed with the way she was treated. First of all, she does not want to remain silent. Anderson-Barker says she has asked the court to lift a confidentiality provision contained in the settlement agreement. She declined to comment further.
But Surjue also wants the public to hear what she has been through. �I urinate on myself,� she says. �I want to be able to stand up and say that�s what [Morse] did to me.�
Above all, she says she worries for her safety in Inglewood and that of her children. She would like to be able to afford to move them, but the settlement she has been offered � $15,000 for each child earmarked for college tuition, $190,000 for her, $250,000 for her attorneys � just won�t cut it, she says.
�I want to take my children out of the place where they were traumatized,� she says. �The concerns I have for my children seem secondary to getting this case off someone�s calendar.�
unite the many,
defeat the few!
![[masthead]](/images/masthead_140.png)