"This video was shown in a federal courtroom this morning in the ongoing trial over whether conditions at the Orleans Parish jail are unconstitutional. In it, inmates highlight poor conditions in the now-closed House of Detention." - NOLA
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Ice-T Defends His Gun Rights "It's To Protect Ourselves From The Police"
Speaking with Channel 4 London's Krishnan Guru-Murthy in the hours after the Colorado news broke, the self-described "Godfather of Gangsta Rap" vehemently denied a connection between gun rights and the Aurora murders.
"It's legal in the United States," the rapper said. "The right to bear arms is because that's the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It's to protect yourself from the police."
"And do you see any link between that and this sort of instance?" Guru-Murthy challenged.
"No. Not really," Ice-T responded. "If somebody wants to kill people, they don't need a gun to do it."
"Makes it easier though, doesn't it?" the host pushed back.
"Not really. You can strap explosives on your body. They do that all the time."
R.I.P Damon Abraham: Tasered 4 Times While Handcuffed & Witnesses Claim He Was Beaten To Death By LA Police
Baldwin police are now saying Mr. Abraham "may have been on narcotics" which may be the reason for his death. However, witnesses and family members are consistently telling the same story of a brutal beating and several Taser shots. "How can [you] receive a broken jar closed eye and head injuries from a Taser," Jajuan "Fish" Abraham, Damon's nephew, said via Facebook. "And let's not forget [they dragged him] to the car like you drag a dead dog with a collar," he said. Mr. Abraham leaves behind a son and daughter who will now grow up without a father. Our thoughts are with the Abraham family.
R.I.P Damon Abraham: Tasered 4 Times While Handcuffed & Witnesses Claim He Was Beaten To Death By LA Police
Cop Punches Woman In Face During Arrest For Riding A Bike
From the video captured by two Millville Police car dashboard cameras, emerge two very different versions of what happened in the pre-dawn hours of February 3, 2008.
The just-released video is at the center of a lawsuit in which Sheila Stevenson, 42, claims she became the victim of excessive force, after then-Millville Police Officer Carlo Drogo pulled her over for illegally riding her bicycle on a sidewalk.
In the course of trying to handcuff Stevenson, the video shows Drogo as he sprays himself in the face with pepper spray and she appears to push him. Drogo then appears to knock Stevenson to the ground to subdue her. Drogo is seen, seemingly doubled over in pain, as other officers arrive.
I am not doing nothing, Stevenson screamed on the video.
Put your hands behind your back, one of the other officers ordered.
Can you not do this? Im not doing nothing! Im not doing nothing, she wailed.
Seconds later, Drogo approaches Stevenson again and appears to punch her four times.
Why are you hitting me? Youre hitting me! Why are you hitting me? Stevenson cried out. Why did you hit me and Im handcuffed?
Stevenson was eventually led away by officers and put into a police cruiser. She was later convicted of resisting arrest.
Stevensons civil suit, filed in Cumberland County Superior Court in December, names Drogo, other Millville Police officers and the city of Millville as defendants.
Stevensons lawyer would not comment on the case, nor would Millvilles Police chief, citing pending litigation.
Drogo resigned from the police department in October for undisclosed reasons. He would not talk with NBC 10 News on-camera, but issued a statement in which he stood by his actions and called Stevensons allegations a distortion of the facts.
Drogo also insisted the arrest was lawful and described Stevensons lawsuit as frivolous.
Meanwhile, theres now a warrant out for Stevensons arrest on drug possession charges, stemming from her encounter with police that was caught on camera.
14 Year Old Beat & Choked By Toledo Police!
Family members for 14-year-old Trevor Casey, who was arrested May 15 after loitering in front of a Brand Whitlock apartment, was rushed to a Toledo the hospital Tuesday.
Racism, Corruption & Police Brutality in the UK
The failure to properly investigate the death of Stephen Lawrence, a black student who was killed in London in 1993, has left the UK with a police force that has been branded as institutionally racist.
The British police failure to investigate the issue led to an inquiry in 1998 which concluded that the investigation into Stephen's death was marked by professional incompetence and institutional racism in the police force.
Evidence before the inquiry stated that if the color of the victim and the attackers was reversed, the police would have acted very differently.
Not much has changed since then, and it may even be growing worse. Stop and search policies are direct more than ever towards black Britons and less than 10% of the UK police are of ethnic background.
Recently researchers have found that black people are 30 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white citizens. This edition of A Simple Question asks: is the British police force racist?
4 Officers Beat Black Suspect in Western Massachusetts!
Police caught on tape terroristically beating a black man and then arresting his mate.
Video shows officer using Taser on teen
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer involved in a deadly Taser confrontation with a teenager will not lose his job, but he will be suspended for five days.
We Have Had Enough Of Police Brutality! Chris Monfort Speaks in Court
SNIPPET OF STATEMENT
FULL VERSION
Man Kills Cop Over Brutality -- Christopher Monfort -- Seattle, WA
Seattle, WA -- A man fed up with police brutality kills a cop in retaliation for it. There are surruptitiously-recorded videos aplenty all over the Web which depict Seattle cops attacking law-abiding citizens for ridiculously minor reasons. Mr. Monfort is considered by many to be the definitive folk hero for standing up to the sanctimonious felons in Seattle who masquerade as legitimate law enforcement officers. As always happens to brave patriots who kill domestic terrorist in self defense, they get framed for murder even though it was justifiable homicide. The lying police also savagely beat the hero -- proving that they are arrogant, sanctimonious cowards who are immune from prosecution.
Disagreement on Terminology "Brutality" & "Neglect" (But, Tanisha Williams is still Brain Dead)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A group from Atlanta is bringing new accusations of police brutality in the case of a teenager who strangled herself in the back of a police car, but even the teen's family is distancing itself from the group and its charges.
The New Black Liberation Militia/Institute stood outside the CitiTrends store on Freedom Drive Saturday, preaching their case against Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. The group's speaker, Mauricelm-Lei Millere, accused officers of beating Tanisha Williams with a baton before putting her in the back of the police car.
Williams had been accused of shoplifting from the store on December 5th, but police have said she was taken into custody because she refused to give her name.
After being placed in the back of an officer's car, the car's dashboard camera shows Williams -- still handcuffed -- banging her head against a Plexiglas partition, and then wrapping the car's seatbelt around her neck three times. She then slumps over.
Minutes later, after repeatedly trying to talk to Williams, officers notice the seat belt around her neck and cut it loose, then perform CPR.
Williams' family said she is brain-dead, and breathing with the help of a ventilator. They have not made any decisions about her long-term care, but do not expect her to recover.
Millere contends Williams behaved erratically because she had already been beaten, quoting phone calls he said his organization received at their office in Atlanta.
"They saw the girl beaten and laying face down on the concrete before she even got in the car," he said.
Police deny the accusations, but said the case is still being investigated.
"If we have witnesses come forward, you'd better believe we're going to investigate it," said CMPD spokesman Rob Tufano on Saturday. "But this is the first time I'm hearing any of that."
Even Williams's family is distancing itself from the group's attempt to draw attention to the case. The family's attorney, William Harding, said the group has every right to speak its opinion, but Williams's family doesn't agree with their accusations.
"This is not an issue of police brutality or harassment," said Harding. "This is an issue of neglect and failure to follow the policies."
Harding said Tanisha Williams should not have been left unsupervised in the back of the patrol car when she was seen banging her head on the plastic partition in a fit of rage.
Tufano said an officer had left to get additional restraints, but then thought Williams had calmed down by the time they got back. He said they could not see the belt around her neck because her hair covered it up.
Police are still conducting an internal investigation, and reviewing security tape from nearby businesses to get a more complete picture of what happened before and after Williams was put in the police car.
Tufano said his sympathy goes out to Williams's family, but police could not have prevented what happened. He said if there is more to the story, police, too, would like to hear it.
"If anybody does have that kind of information, we ask they come forward -- we'll interview them," said Tufano. "But the way I see it -- the way the department sees it -- right now that this is nothing but a tragic, self-inflicted injury" - 7 January 2012.
SHOCKING Police Brutality: Police Mistake Innocent Man
Cops mistake an Asian man for a African American man
The Murfreesboro Police claim they mistook Sushak for a man they were after during a car chase. The chase ended when the driver, who is 28 and from Laos in Southeast Asia, stopped his car and ran into a home near where Sushak lived.
"I came out my door and ... I walked over, and four or five of them showed up and pulled their guns on me," Sushak said. "They had me get on the ground and said to do it right now, and if I didn't they would shoot me. They told me to get down and put my hands on my head, and I did."
They then began to kick him in the head and all over the body. After he was handcuffed and put into the police car, another group of officers turned up and told the other cops he wasn't the suspect they were looking for.
Sushak was treated at a local emergency room for injuries sustained during the incident.
We hope that Sushak receives justice for this outrage committed against him.
Aryan Brotherhood Share Kindred-Spirit with Police: "To Protect Whatever Power the White Man has Left in America"
"And they’re also sincere in their belief that many members of law enforcement are kindred spirits, right-wingers who understand their hatreds, loss of hegemony, and rabid determination to protect whatever power the white man has left in America. And those who don’t buy into their hateful rhetoric they perceive as being weak-kneed sob sisters who will willingly mongrelize and sell out their proud white heritage. Truly, everyone who is not with them is against them. " - Recollection of Conversations with Aryan Brotherhood Members
Read Below for Quote in Context of Entire Article
by Anonymous Apr 1, 2013 2:29 PM EDT
Whether or not the Aryan Brotherhood killed two Texas prosecutors, their increasing emergence from prison should strike fear in all of us. I should know—I was behind bars with them.
Law enforcement officers may have a real problem on their hands. They’re being tight-lipped about it, but it’s something they should have been aware of for decades. They had to see it coming.
Patti McConville/Getty
Four people have been killed since the beginning of the year in a series of shootings that appear to be connected to the homegrown jihadists of the Aryan Brotherhood. Mike McLelland, the district attorney of Texas’s Kaufman County, and his wife, Cynthia Woodward, became the latest victims this past weekend. Before that, McLelland’s former colleague Mark Hasse was shot in January. Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements was gunned down in mid-March.
The Brotherhood, also known as The Brand, AB, and One-Two, was formed during the 1960s by a group of white convicts serving time at San Quentin. They allegedly were fed up with white prisoners being victimized by the two predominant gangs, the Black Gorilla Family (BGF) and the Mexican Mafia and decided to form a gang of their own for self-protection. While initially closely associated with Nazism ideologically, many adherents belong to the group for the identity and purpose it provides. The ironclad rule for entrée into the Brotherhood is simple: kill a black or a Hispanic prisoner. The other rule, which is just as ironclad, gave rise to their motto: “Blood In/Blood Out.”
Quitting isn’t an option. There’s only death.
I got up close and personal with members of the Brotherhood more than 20 years ago in Nevada. Due to the relatively sparse population in northern Nevada, the feds didn’t have their own lockup in which to house pretrial detainees, or at least they didn’t back then. So they rented a “range”— a row—of 14 cells in Nevada’s maximum-security prison in Carson City to house defendants going back and forth to Federal Court in nearby Reno.
Other prisoners, like me, were being held at various city and county jails in the area, but everyone who knew they were not going anywhere soon wanted to get moved to Carson City, where there was a day room with a working color TV, a fairly well-equipped weight pile, and, by prison standards, excellent food. As I would also discover when I got there, the low-paid state prison guards assigned to the special unit were fairly easy to bribe: the occasional fifth of Jack Daniel’s or a dime bag of weed (which the guard got $100 for) found its way onto the range.
So after three months in a single cell (I’d get out once a week for a shower), when my lawyer said she could get me moved to Carson City I was very eager—until I got there. There were 13 white guys, and seven of them, I could tell by the tattoos, were members of the Brotherhood. But by then I was a seasoned convict (having served four previous sentences, this wasn’t my first rodeo), so I’d been around prison gangs before and knew the ropes. I kept my head down, my eyes averted, and ate my meals alone at the far end of the table…at least for the first few weeks.
Then two things happened in fairly rapid succession. First, a small article about my case made it into a local paper in which the feds accused me and my crew of absconding with millions of dollars with our nefarious credit-card activities in the casinos in and around Nevada. The amount made me out to be a serious professional, worthy of respect even in the Brotherhood’s eyes, albeit only grudgingly given. The second thing that happened was the leader of the group, a huge guy with reddish hair and beard appropriately named “Big Red,” had a legal problem I helped him to solve.
The one thing I learned relatively quickly was that while the members of this tight-knit group might have been long on brawn and violence, they were short on brains. Big Red had served in the military. He wanted some documents from the military to present at his upcoming murder trial. I guess he wanted to prove how patriotic he had been while serving his country. But none of them could fill out the stack of forms, so I volunteered to help. When the documents I requested came back about a month later, I was considered a legal whiz on the order of F. Lee Bailey.
I was, to a degree, “in.” They considered me a harmless black mascot, I considered them fools to be played. As the saying goes, I was “stuck like Chuck.”
When the situation calls for it, they’re killers.
Eventually I was doing all kinds of writing, both legal and otherwise. I would pen poems for their wives, children’s and girlfriend’s birthdays, and these semi-illiterates were simply amazed. Ah, the power of the pen. My first paid writing gig paid me a grand total of three packs of cigarettes.
All of a sudden Big Red noticed how I looked like his football hero, Earl Campbell. It’s amazing to me how gridiron prowess can overcome even the deep-seated antipathy of a dyed-in-the-wool bigot. Of course, other than having black skin, I looked nothing at all like Campbell. But I could hold my own on the iron pile, by then being able to bench press close to 250 pounds.
And, having an ear for dialects, I’d also—quite slyly and over a period of months—developed a bit of a Texas twang. Speaking the “language” can be critical to acceptance, and I discovered how time and familiarity can overcome even the seemingly insurmountable of racial barriers.
When the guard smuggled in chewing tobacco, I packed my cheeks with the foul leaf and learned to hit our coffee-can spittoon with the best of ’em.
These were very tough men facing long sentences for serious crimes, but after a while they didn’t guard their tongues around me … they felt no need to. I’d gained their trust, and by then they knew I wasn’t facing serious charges, so I wouldn’t have the need to betray them by trading information, since my lawyer was already negotiating a relatively short sentence for me. I was privy to their conversations and after a few slips they even quit using the “N” word, but only after Big Red leveled his menacing glare at the offender.
These were men steeped in strong oral traditions and past heroic acts. They were still mentally fighting the Civil War (like so many other whites) and traced their roots back to men like Confederate guerrilla William Clarke Quantrill, whose Quantrill’s Raiders sacked the pro-abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, at the beginning of the Civil War. One guy, Luke, claimed to be a direct descendant of one of the men who rode with Quantrill. He alleged that his great-grandfather was Cole Younger, the outlaw who robbed banks with Jesse James’s gang after the end of the Civil War. At age 38, Luke considered himself to be a proud third or fourth generation (he couldn’t count backwards too well) bank robber. His father, and grandfather before him, had robbed banks for a living as well.
It was from Luke that I first heard of Mountain Home, Idaho, when he said, “If I coulda just made it back to Mountain Home, I’da been OK.” The trouble he was referring to was his last bank robbery for which he was now awaiting sentencing, where he and his crew had kidnapped a bank-branch manager and strapped 10 sticks of dynamite around her chest and wired it to a remote detonator. He was not some little desperate punk-assed note passer; the crew he worked with would, after months of planning, take over the whole bank and, in his words, “take all of the goddamn money.” They felt it was unprofessional to leave one dollar bill behind.
He was the only one of the four captured and flat out told the FBI that he “didn’t know shit.” When they threatened him with a longer sentence, according to him his response was “rush it and you won’t owe it.” I believed him, since these were among the most standup dudes I’d ever encountered.
I gradually learned (from men who had no need to embellish their deeds as some armchair neo-Nazi pseudo-tough guys are prone to do) of Mountain Home and other pockets of armed resistance situated in rural areas of three or four western states where federal authorities are reluctant to enter to enforce the law.
“They know we’re up in there,” I remember Luke saying, “but it ain’t worth riskin’ getting their asses blown off to come in and try to take us out. They want to go home too, and they know we ain’t fucking around. We ain’t trying to overthrow the government or nothing. We’re just fighting to protect our wives, kids and our way of life, and them coward motherfuckers know it. All we’re asking is to be left alone.” He conveniently forgot about all the banks he’d robbed to be able to afford all of the expensive, high-end toys he once possessed.
Unlike David Koresh and his sheeplike followers (and other sects based on religious fanaticism), these are battle-hardened and death-tested men (many of them, like Big Red, with extensive military experience) who are not set on dying for some kind of religious cause; their thing is that, when the situation calls for it, they’re killers. They’re not into dying—except to protect the honor of the Brotherhood.
And they’re also sincere in their belief that many members of law enforcement are kindred spirits, right-wingers who understand their hatreds, loss of hegemony, and rabid determination to protect whatever power the white man has left in America. And those who don’t buy into their hateful rhetoric they perceive as being weak-kneed sob sisters who will willingly mongrelize and sell out their proud white heritage. Truly, everyone who is not with them is against them.
Their network, even back then was already so strong that when I arrived at the federal prison in Kentucky where I was to serve out my sentence, within a week of arriving a tattooed AB member came up to me in the yard and said, “We heard about what you did for Big Red out there in Nevada … if you need anything, if anybody fucks with you, just let me know.”
I never spoke to this dude again for the next 18 months, until the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in downtown Oklahoma City about a week before I was slated to exit prison for the last time. Standing in front of the TV in the day room he turned to me and said, “This ain’t shit, just wait until we get started. They done took me from my family for over 30 years because of some of punk-assed drug-conspiracy bullshit, and eventually they’re going to have to pay … We’re going to make them pay.”
If these recent killings represent the Brotherhood’s twisted form of retribution, the fact that it has taken so long to begin is all the more chilling. To me this would demonstrate a hard-nosed determination that all citizens should find frightening. We shouldn’t be whistling past the graveyard on these killings.
These are men with a huge ax to grind. While few of them would argue they deserve no time behind bars for their crimes, virtually all of them feel the amount of time handed out under federal sentencing guidelines is far, far too punitive … way out of proportion; that punishments don’t fit the crimes, and some legal scholars actually agree.
America’s harsh judicial system, coupled with a growing national affinity for utilizing complete isolation at super-max prisons as a corrections tactic of first choice, in many cases turns men into monsters. And, truth be told, there is no such thing as truly locking away the gang leaders so they can no longer call the shots on the prison yard … or even on the streets.
Someone has to feed these case-hardened convicts three times a day, and who might you think carries this duty out? If you’re thinking it’s the guards, you’re wrong. They’re not about to be turned into waiters for men they often view as the scum of the earth no matter what. Instead, that duty falls to other prisoners known as “trustees.” And these trustees smuggle all of the messages the guards are not bribed (or threatened) into carrying back and forth. Hey, everyone’s got families, you know.
The true terrorist wins because of his or her willingness to die for what they believe in—history has taught us that over and over again. Many of the first men locked up when our nation embarked on a policy of for-profit mass incarceration near the end of the last century are now returning into society. And, as predicted by numerous professionals, they are sicker and more dangerous than when they went behind bars.
While the U.S. population grew 2.8 times since 1920, the U.S. prison population grew more than 20 times, and most dramatically since 1980. The fear among law enforcement is (or at least should be) is that now we have dozens upon dozens—if not hundreds (who knows, maybe even thousands)—of murderous chickens finally coming home to roost.
* * * * *
"Four people have been killed since the beginning of the year in a series of shootings that appear to be connected to the homegrown jihadists of the Aryan Brotherhood. Mike McLelland, the district attorney of Texas's Kaufman County, and his wife, Cynthia Woodward, became the latest victims this past weekend. Before that, McLelland's former colleague Mark Hasse was shot in January. Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements was gunned down in mid-March."*
Terrorist killings are happening in the United State and prosecutors are even quitting cases out of fear. It's suspected these killings are coming from the Aryan Brotherhood, built behind bars. How are these 'jihadist" murders coming to be? Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
Police Shoots Guy 12 Times (Darrius Kennedy)
NYPD Killed Darrius Kennedy, The confrontation began when a cop spied Kennedy smoking marijuana at 44th St and 7th Ave. just after 3 p.m. Saturday. Kennedy grew belligerent, and when police attempted to cuff him, he struggled free, pulling an Ikea kitchen knife with a six-inch blade out of his pocket and waving it over his head.
He backed down 7th Ave for seven blocks as more cops amassed.
"He's not fleeing," Browne said. "He's backing up continuing to menace them and members of the public nearby with the knife."
Kennedy was pepper-sprayed six times by four cops to little effect.
"He's repeatedly told throughout this period to drop the knife," Browne said.
Two police cars pulled onto the sidewalk, attempting to block Kennedy's path down 7th Ave. as he approached 37th St.
The madman squeezed past the first vehicle before its driver could get out, but officers from the second car jumped out to confront him.
"He comes at them," Browne said.
As Kennedy lunged at the two cops with his knife, they fired 12 times. Neither officer had discharged their weapon in the line of duty before, police said. Both are from the Midtown South precinct.
One officer, age 33, fired nine times. His partner, age 40, fired three times.
Kennedy was hit at least seven times, official said. He died at Bellevue Hospital from gunshot wounds to the chest, groin, left arm and left calf.
Kennedy was taken to the same hospital by cops in October 2008 for a psychiatric evaluation after he was picked up for knocking over garbage cans in Times Square.
A month later he was arrested after yelling curses at motorists as he walked amongst traffic on Broadway near W. 66th St.
When police moved in to arrest him, he threatened them with a screwdriver.
"I"m gonna f- you up," Kennedy told cops, according to NYPD officials.
He was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, menacing, reckless endangerment, and resisting arrest in the 2008 incident.
He was sentenced to 40 days in jail after pleading guilty to resisting arrest.
He has additional prior arrests stretching back to 1978, cops said, for harassment and possession of marijuana, weapons and stolen property.
But Kennedy's family remembered him as an easy-going musician who played bass in church in his hometown of Hempstead, L.I., though they admitted to losing touch with him in recent years.
"I think they could have given him a warning shot, probably a shot in the leg or arm," said Kennedy's cousin, Kathy Johnson.
"I know they've got to protect the people, but at the same time, you took somebody's life."
NYPD officials said the department uses deadly force sparingly. Eight people were fatally shot by police last year.
"As a big city department, we're probably the most restrained in the country when it comes to deadly force," Browne said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)