California Cops Clamp Down on Disneyland Dissent

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 Infantile Disorder

Broad sections of the Anaheim working class are seething with anger at cops

Disneyland in Anaheim is emblematic of 'the American dream' - a make-believe world where 'good' always triumphs over 'evil' in the end, and childhood innocence lasts forever. Yet at the gates of this fairytale paradise, torrents of anger are being directed at police for the huge amounts of state killings in the area, and the guardians of the rich are responding with ever more militaristic displays of power.

The wave of unrest began ten days ago, when cops shot and killed 25-year-old Manuel Diaz. The chief of police immediately labelled Diaz a "documented gang member". According to the official version, Diaz and two other men were talking in an alley when police approached them. The men ran, and the officers gave chase, eventually firing at the unarmed Diaz, after he had thrown an object - possibly heroin - onto a roof.

Considering the local circumstances, it is hardly surprising that many of Anaheim's residents didn't find Diaz's supposed 'gang member' status a good enough reason to kill him. After, Diaz was the fourth victim of the city's finest this year alone. He was followed just one day later by 21-year-old Joel Acevedo. As far as gang war death tolls go, five in just seven months is quite prolific.

In the meantime, demonstrators had crowded the lobby of the Anaheim PD, as the chief held a press conference. They chanted "no justice, no peace, fuck the police", and "cops, pigs, murderers". And even as authorities moved to seal off the scene, they were met with rocks and bottles. Cops retaliated with rubber bullets, and a savage dog attack on one woman, which they later labelled "accidental".

Protests simmered throughout the week, before another police shooting - this time non-fatal - on Thursday, when tensions were brought boiling back to the surface. On Sunday, a mass demonstration of several hundred were faced down by mounted cops in riot gear and heavily armed paramilitary-style troopers protecting the police station. An impromptu march towards the tourist haven of Disneyland was headed off by hundreds of security forces. The demonstration was declared an "illegal assembly", and nine arrests were made.

Despite the obvious groundswell of anger, it is difficult to predict where this new movement is going. Liberal Latino group Presente is trying to channel energy behind a petition for an attorney general inquiry. As the history of policing shows ad nauseam, such an inquiry would inevitably whitewash Anaheim cops.

The scene at Anaheim police HQ on Sunday

Ultimately, the brutal policing in Anaheim, the community's response to it, and then the authorities' nervous and draconian reaction all have their roots in the decaying state of American capitalism itself. With Anaheim's tourism-based economy stagnating since the onset of the economic crisis, official unemployment in the area is currently just under 10% - two per cent above the national average and a huge increase on 2006. The poverty rate is also rising, and is particularly pronounced amongst black and Latino people. With cuts raining down from everywhere, and a new wave of job losses about to crest, the authorities can only offer ever more draconian repression.

An inquiry here or there will never fix the problem of the growing police state. That is something only a massive class conscious movement against the super rich can achieve.

Near-Riot Breaks Out After Officer-Involved Shooting In Anaheim

 July 21, 2012 (CBS/AP)

ANAHEIM  — A police shooting that left a man dead led to a near-riot Saturday as angry witnesses threw bottles at officers who responded with tear gas and beanbag rounds.



The man was shot around 4 p.m. in front of an apartment complex on the 600 block of North Anna Drive following a foot chase, Anaheim Sgt. Bob Dunn said. He died three hours later at a hospital.

The Orange County Register cited family members and neighbors who said the man shot was Manuel Diaz. Dunn said he could not confirm the man’s name early Sunday.

His niece, 16-year-old Daisy Gonzalez, said her uncle likely ran away from officers when they approached him because of his past experience with law enforcement. “He (doesn’t) like cops. He never liked them because all they do is harass and arrest anyone,” Gonzalez said.

Residents, protesting what they say is an increased police violence against them in the community, started the near riot after the shooting on nearby La Palma.

Crystal Ventura, a 17-year-old who witnessed the shooting, told the Register the man had his back to the officer. She said the man was shot in the buttocks area. The man then went down on his knees, and she said he was struck by another bullet in the head. Another officer handcuffed the man who by then was on the ground and not moving, Ventura said.

“They searched his pockets, and there was a hole in his head, and I saw blood on his face,” she said.

Dunn said he could not comment on these allegations because the shooting is under investigation.

Jay Jackson, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, said Saturday night’s scene was chaotic.
The residents blocked off a street and set fire to at least one dumpster.
Earlier in the day, police in riot gear, fired rubber bullets into the crowd. Several protesters lifted their shirts to show large red welts on their torsos and backs.

Residents told Jackson that police overreacted and created the disturbance.
One man said, “They just started shooting.”

Police also set a K-9 officer on one woman and a bystander they said were agitating the situation.

Said Susan Lopez, “I had my baby with me. My baby! The dog scratched me and then grabbed me.” She added, “They shot at me while I was holding a baby!” Another woman yelled, “They just shot at us, they shot at a little kid, too.”

According to police, two patrol officers observed three male suspects in an alley.
Police said the suspects tried to flee on foot when a chase ensued.

The shooting reportedly occurred after one of the officers encountered one of the suspects in a courtyard.

No officers were injured.

The other two suspects are at-large.

Dunn said, “What exactly led to the shooting, we don’t know. We’re still investigating. But a shooting did occur. And the male was taken to a hospital.”

Authorities said the circumstances regarding the shooting were under investigation by members of the gangs unit and Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Four people told Jackson that police offered to buy their cell phone video.

Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 110 Black People

Jul 9, 2012 Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

Report on Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers January 1 – June 30, 2012.

This report was produced for the “No More Trayvon Martins Campaign”, demanding a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice. This is the 2nd Major report of the Campaign.

Download this report as a PDF using this link.

A human rights crisis confronts Black people in the United States. Since January 1, 2012, police and a much smaller number of security guards and self-appointed vigilantes have murdered at least 110 Black women and men. These killings are definitely not accidental or random acts of violence or the work of rogue cops. As we noted in our April 6^th, 2012 “Trayvon Martin is All of US!” Report (see http://mxgm.org/trayvon-martin-is-all-of-us/), the use of deadly force against Black people is standard practice in the United States, and woven into to the very fabric of the society.
The corporate media have given very little attention to these extrajudicial killings. We call them “extrajudicial” because they happen without trial or any due process, against all international law and human rights conventions. Those few mainstream media outlets that mention the epidemic of killings have been are unwilling to acknowledge that the killings are systemic – meaning they are embedded in institutional racism and national oppression. On the contrary, nearly all of the mainstream media join in a chorus that sings the praises of the police and read from the same script that denounces the alleged “thuggery” of the deceased. Sadly, too many people believe the police version of events and the media’s “blame-the-victim” narratives that justify and support these extrajudicial killings.
However, we have studied each of the reports of these deaths — including false, implausible and inconsistent claims by police and witness reports that contradict police reports. From this study and many peoples’ experience, we must reject the corporate media’s rationalization for the horrible fact that in the first six months of this year, one Black person every 40 hours was executed. This wanton disregard for Black life resulted in the killing of 13 year-old children, fathers taking care of their kids, women driving the wrong cars, as well as people with mental health and drug problems.
This report documents how people of African descent remain “without sanctuary” throughout the United States. Nowhere is a Black woman or man safe from racial profiling, invasive policing, constant surveillance, and overriding suspicion. All Black people – regardless of education, class, occupation, behavior or dress – are subject to the whims of the police whose institutionalized racist policies and procedures require them to arbitrarily stop, frisk, arrest, brutalize and even execute Black people.
Invasive policing is only one aspect of the U.S. states comprehensive containment strategies to exploit Black people and to smother resistance. To contain the upsurge of the Black liberation movement of the 1960’s and 70’s and protect the system of white supremacy the institutional forces of racism have worked through governments at every level to destabilize the Black community via community divestment, massive employment discrimination, outsourcing, gentrification and other forms of economic dislocation. In addition, schools, housing, healthcare, other social services and transportation in Black communities have been denied equitable provision and distribution of public goods and resources.
The U.S. state maintains and reinforces these economic injustices with the militarized occupation of Black communities by the police and a web of racist legislation like the “war on drugs”, discriminatory polices like “three strikes” and “mandatory minimum” sentencing. The result is a social system that mandates the prison warehousing of millions of Black people and extrajudicial killings where the killers act with impunity and more often than not are rewarded and promoted for murder. The oppression and police occupation of Black communities parallels the brutalization, denial of human rights and killings being committed by the Israeli occupying forces in Palestine, and the persecution of Afrodescendants in Columbia and the Indigenous peoples of Brazil over the past several years. Nothing short of the structural integrity and survival of the Black community is at stake when we consider the historic record.
For those who doubted the framing of the “Trayvon Martin is All of Us!” Report, this 6^th month update proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the institutionalized violence of white supremacy is not only alive and well, but is, in fact, intensifying. To complete the picture, we must take into account the extrajudicial killings and other repressive policies directed at other targeted peoples and communities such as Indigenous peoples, Latinos, Arabs, Muslims, and immigrants. These, in conjunction with the oppression of Black people, demonstrate that the U.S. government remains committed to maintaining the system of white supremacy created by the aggressive and illegal European settler-colonies that first established the national-state project.
This crisis can only be stopped through decisive action. First, the Black community must organize its own self-defense. Second, we must build a broad, mass movement capable of forcing the government to enact transformative legislation based on our demands. The fundamental transformative demand must be for a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice to eliminate institutional racism and advance the struggle for self-determination. The Black community itself will determine the specific contents of The Plan, drawing from the foundation of CERD (the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Racial Discrimination) and the DDPA (Durban Declaration and Programme of Action).
We call on everyone who believes that decisive action must be taken by Black and other oppressed peoples to confront and defeat national oppression and white supremacy to join us in developing an independent, mass movement for human rights that builds power in our communities and will have the capacity to force the Federal authorities to implement a comprehensive National Plan of Action for Racial Justice.  You can join us immediately by helping us secure 1 million signatures to our petition (see http://mxgm.org/trayvon-martin-is-all-of-us/), organizing Copwatch and People’s Self-Defense campaigns, fighting for elected Police Control Boards, the demilitarization of our communities, and the reinvestment of the military and security budget into community reinvestment and social programs amongst other suggestions provided in our “Local Struggles” paper (see http://mxgm.org/no-more-trayvons-campaign/). We also encourage communities to organize their own grassroots crisis intervention, domestic violence prevention/control and mediation teams so families in crisis do not become so desperate for help that they compound their problems by calling 9-1-1 and inviting the police into their homes.
We also call all organizations and individuals who agree with the demand and framework for a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice to help us build the National Alliance for Racial Justice and Human Rights (NARJHR) as a structure that will help us develop and implement a comprehensive national plan that centers oppressed peoples’ right to self-determination and the full realization of our human rights.
For more information about the Report or any of these action proposals, contact Kali Akuno at kaliakuno@mxgm.org.
FOOTNOTES
¹ The figures for the number of Palestinians killed in 2011 can be found at http://www.ochaopt.org/poc.aspx?id=1010002.  Figures for Afro-Colombians can be found at http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2322/, http://www.afrocolombians.com/pdfs/PCNonFTA-April12.pdf and http://news.afrocolombians.com/news/?sectionid=8.  Figures on Indigenous peoples killed in Brazil can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/world/americas/in-brazil-violence-hits-tribes-in-scramble-for-land.html.
² To read the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination see http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cerd.htm. To read the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action see http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009/ddpa.shtml.

Highlights from the Report

110 Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers between January 1 – June 30, 2012

1. These executions primarily destroy Black communities’ future and spirit by stealing the lives of our youth. Of the 110 lives taken:
• 13 or 12% were children under 18 years old.
• 20 or 18% were 18-21 years old, just entering adulthood.
• 45 or 41% were 22-31 years old.
• 17 or 15% were 32-41 years old.
• 9 or 8% were 42-51 years old.
• 4 or 4% were over 52 years.
• 2 or 2% were of undetermined age.

71 Per Cent of the Lives Lost Belonged to People from the Ages of 13 to 31.
2. These executions happen nationwide: from north to south; east to west; in rural towns and large metropolitan areas. Like in the years of lynching, there is no geographic sanctuary. Yet some cities—especially in the South– execute Black people without trial in numbers disproportionate to the size of their Black populations. Here are the cities with 2 or more executions.

States where Black People were killed by Police (January through June 2012)

US Cities - Extrajudicial Killings of Black People

Search:

U.S. City Name	Number Executed (Jan-June 2012)	Black Population (2010 Census)	Ratio of Deaths per Million Black People
New York City	9	2,228,145	4
Atlanta Metro (includes Clayton County)	9	399.505	23
Dallas	8	308,087	26
Chicago Metro (includes Calumet City & Dolton)	7	915,436	8
New Orleans	5	213,918	23
Jacksonville	4	252,421	16
Baltimore	4	403,998	10
Cleveland (includes Maple Heights)	3	227,451	13
Memphis	3	414,828	7
Tulsa	3	65,771	46
Saginaw	2	38,800	52
Miami	2	481,812	2
Birmingham	2	155,791	13
Dothan	2	21,286	94
Fayetteville	2	84,040	24

3. A significant proportion of the 110 were killed because they suffered from mental health problems or were intoxicated and behaved in ways the police allegedly could not control.
   • 24 people or 22% might be alive today if community members trained and committed to humane crisis intervention and mental health treatment had been called rather than the police.
4. What is the relationship between “stop and frisk” policies and procedures and racial profiling and these deadly encounters? This report documents how these encounters were initiated. Encounters that began because the “suspect was engaged in suspicious behavior or looked suspicious or was driving suspiciously” show how often racial profiling leads to death.
• 43 (39%) of police accounts explicitly cite “suspicious behavior or appearance” or traffic violations (“driving while Black”) as the reason for their attempt to detain the person who they eventually killed.
• 20 (18%) deadly encounters began with calls to 9-1-1 to seek help in resolving “domestic disturbances”. These included family members seeing assistance in dealing with mentally troubled people.
• 11 (10%) people who had violated no law or had not been involved in any harmful behavior were killed.
• That leaves only 36 people or 33% killed in the course of police investigating activity they define as “criminal”.
5. Most of the people executed were not armed.Here is the breakdown:
   • 47 had no weapon at all at the time they were executed.
   • 40 were alleged by police to have weapons (including a cane, toy gun and bb gun) but this allegation is disputed by witnesses or later investigation. Police are infamous for planting weapons or deciding that a cell phone, wallet or other harmless object is a gun.
   • 21 were likely armed
6. Police and other executioners typically justify their murders by reporting that the “suspect” ran away, pointed a gun or crashed into them with a car and therefore they had to use deadly force to defend themselves.
• In the first half of 2012, police alleged that 38 of the people they executed attempted to run away from them.
• 20 of the people who were murdered allegedly pointed guns at officers and/or attempted to crash into them. Reports often do not mention if the officers were wearing uniforms or if the “suspects had any way of knowing their assailants were not civilians.
7. Regardless of how these encounters begin, whether they involve activity that violates the laws of the state or the laws of basic human decency, no one should be sentenced to death without a trial.In most countries, even with a trial, capital punishment is considered barbaric. So the use of deadly force is always “excessive” (and extrajudicial by international human rights standards) except in certain circumstances.
   • 15 cases in this report or less than 14%, if the facts reported are true, involve situations where the “suspect” shot and wounded and/or killed the police and/or others while the police were on the scene. Although it would have been preferable to stop them with non-lethal force, the use of lethal force in these circumstances can not be considered excessive. But in the remaining 95 cases, killings were extrajudicial, that is, they used lethal force with no legitimate justification and violated peoples’ basic human rights.

Cases of Extrajudicial Killings of Black People (January through June 2012)
8. On gender: In the first half of 2012, only 5 out of the 110 executed people were women. Two were accused “car thieves”, two were “innocent bystanders” and one was beaten and smothered by police because they could not calm her emotional agitation. Please note: the most glaring way that women’s oppression enters the picture is in the high number of deaths (18%) that result from mothers, wives, lovers or other family members who call the police because they are desperate for help with their troubled, often frightening, kids and partners. Grassroots community crisis intervention and mediation would lighten the burdens that single mothers and survivors of domestic violence carry and also build towards more community self-reliance. As one mother whose emotionally troubled son said, “calling the police to calm a mentally ill child is like calling an undertaker to deliver a baby.”
9. The “justice system” gives impunity to murderers. The names of a few of the 110 people on this death roll have become nationally-known rallying cries for justice: like Trayvon Martin and Remarley Graham. Their murders have sparked massive mobilizations, media commentary, calls for government intervention, lawsuits and endless legal wrangling. However, after the initial announcements in local news media, the lives of most of those who were executed are forgotten. The standard procedure in most jurisdictions is for police involved in fatal shootings to be given paid “desk-duty” while the department conducts an investigation of itself. The press applauds their fine records while it screams about the criminal records of the deceased. Almost all killer cops are routinely exonerated and quickly return to the street. Grieving families who invariably ask the modest question, “why did he have to die?” are ignored. If there is some demonstrated community outrage the case may be further investigated. The legal system almost never charges these executioners and even if they do, the killing continues. A number of families seek legal redress through the civil courts and seek financial restitution. After years of litigation a tiny minority may gain some solace from a financial payment. And the executions continue.
   • 37% of the Black people who were executed in the first half of 2012 seem to have been totally forgotten. A careful internet search could not find their names after an initial flurry of news about their killings.
   • 6 security guards and self-appointed law enforcers (including Trayvon Martin’s killer and the Tulsa murderers) have been charged.
   • 3 killer cops have been charged: one for vehicular homicide-DUI, two for manslaughter (Remarley Graham’s killer and Christopher Brown’s killer).
   • That is, in 95 cases of extrajudicial killings, the legal system has only charged 9 people, less than 10%. The outcome of these charges is still pending.
10. A note on the research process:
The data for this report was collected by meticulously combing the internet during the last ten days of June 2012. In addition to searching on “police-involved shootings”, “police killings of Black people”, etc., we also went to the websites of the local press, blogs and police departments in the 100 cities and towns with the largest Black populations and followed wherever the links led. In the course of these searches, we found the names of an additional 14 people killed before March 31, who we hadn’t found during the research for the first quarterly report. Those names appear here. There is, as far as we know, no national database that tracks these killings. Wikipedia has posted a very incomplete list and also detailed the other databases available. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States
This report covers the deaths of 110 Black people: 54 from January thru March and 56 from April thru June, 2012. In other words, despite the huge mobilizations after the Remarley Graham and Trayvon Martin murders, the killing continued at an even faster pace. We do not believe the 110 deaths listed here are all the Black people killed by police and security guards. There are no doubt more—especially in places that do not have an active internet media presence. We found the names of an additional 15 people killed by police whose race we could not confirm. There were countless others who were in critical condition from police shootings, but the press never reported on whether they survived. With time, we estimate another 30 to 40 cases might emerge. For more information on any given case, you can type “shooting of name, date, place” in your search engine. For more information on this Report or to contribute updated information, please contact arlene_eisen@sbcglobal.net.

“The Report on Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers January 1 – June 30, 2012”, was produced by Arlene Eisen and Kali Akuno for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). Special assistance was given by Ajamu Baraka.

Living In Two Cities: Tarif And Evelyn Warren

May 23, 2012 Gay City News

Tarif and Evelyn Warren at a May 14 press conference. | GAY CITY NEWS

BY SUSIE DAY | On May 14, Evelyn Warren and Michael Tarif Warren, attorneys at law, held a press conference. They stood outside the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse and announced that their case, Warren v. City of New York, had been settled. They had dropped their lawsuit against the city and the NYPD officers who had beaten and arrested them five years before.

Early in the evening of June 21, 2007, the Warrens were driving in Brooklyn when they saw police chasing a young man into a McDonald’s parking lot. The cops tackled the youth, handcuffed him, threw him to the ground, and began kicking him in the head. The Warrens pulled over, got out of their car, and respectfully asked one Sergeant Steven Talvy of the NYPD Street Narcotic Enforcement Unit why he and his officers were battering someone who was obviously helpless.

At the press conference, Tarif Warren, with his usual soft-spoken dignity, described how Sergeant Steven Talvy yelled at them to “get the ‘F’ back in your vehicle, stay the ‘F’ out of our business.” The Warrens got back into their car.

But, said Tarif, “because the police weren’t wearing identification or badges, we started taking down license plate numbers of what we thought were police vehicles. Sergeant Talvy saw us, came over, and began to punch me on the left side of my head, bursting both my lips. When my wife asked why he did that, he punched her in the jaw. Then he yanked me out of the vehicle with such force that he ripped all the buttons off my shirt and ripped the entire left pants leg of my suit. He slammed me up against the vehicle, handcuffed me, and shoved me in a police van, injuring my shoulder and my head. Something that will always be with me is the wild rage I saw in Steven Talvy’s eyes. Evelyn and I knew that if I had made one slight move, we would not be here today.”

Tarif and Evelyn were charged with resisting arrest, obstructing government administration, and disorderly conduct — offenses carrying seriously penalties. But after a year of court dates, prosecutors dismissed the charges, confessing to the judge that they had no evidence.

New York City, while admitting no wrongdoing in the settlement, awarded Evelyn and Tarif $360,000. And so a traumatic event upending the Warrens’ lives is resolved. Life for Evelyn and Tarif can return to normal. Right?

Have I mentioned that the Warrens are African-American? Did I need to? Do you need to ask the race of the youth whose beating they tried to stop?

China Miéville’s book “The City and the City” takes place in two cities occupying the same geographical space. One city is upscale and thriving; the other, in decline. What keeps the cities inviolably separate is the conscious perceptions, sculpted from birth, of their citizens. To travel between cities without a permit is worse than criminal; to be in both at once, unthinkable.
In New York, New York (they had to name it twice), there are also two cities.

On one hand is the city of Normal. Normal residents assume that, though unfairness may exist, their world is basically all right. Normal life allows one to ignore or “unsee” the city of Pogrom.
Pogrom, on the other hand, runs on fear and a paranoiac onslaught of police and the courts against mostly brown and black people. Pogrom operates impersonally, under the cool, reptilian assumption that atrocities are a useful way to manage a dangerous population. Pogrom’s stop-and-frisk practices, its beatings and arrests coexist alongside the hardworking, God-fearing people of Normal, who, given the benefit of the doubt, are simply trying to live their lives.

On June 21, 2007, the Warrens chose to transgress boundaries — they lived in both cities at once, without a permit.

At the press conference, Evelyn and I talked. “To witness Sergeant Talvy beating my husband, who was offering no resistance and doing nothing wrong,” she said, “has taken a mental and emotional toll on me. I’m no longer as open or receptive to people. I don’t nurture my relationships. It’s like I’ve gone into a shell.”

Though relieved the case is officially over, Evelyn described how disheartened she is that the NYPD hasn’t changed; that, after the incident, Sergeant Talvy was even promoted to lieutenant. In fact, Talvy and his officers were in court last week for jury selection, before the case settled.

“It was like they were at a ball game, laughing, kidding around like they had no real concerns. It’ll sound crazy, but the defendants’ table was behind ours, and it was just killing me that if we went to trial, Talvy would be sitting behind me.”

Later, I described this case to a friend. He’d seen a clip of the press conference on TV news; he was clearly upset that these upstanding people were treated unjustly. But when I mentioned two black men, Ramarley Graham and Kenneth Chamberlain — an 18-year-old in the Bronx and a 68-year-old in White Plains — who were recently shot to death in their own homes by police, my friend backed off a little.

“It’s always been this way,” he said, trying to Normalize the situation. “Maybe it’s worse under Kelly and Bloomberg, but things have always been this way.”

Tarif and Evelyn came of age during the era of civil rights and black nationalism. Different as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were tactically, they shared a conviction in an inherent human goodness. They believed things don’t have to be this way.

That’s why Evelyn talks about “remaining vigilant.” “In spite of what’s happened to us,” she said, “I hope, if we were confronted with the same situation, we’d do the same thing.”

The point is, you usually don’t realize which city you live in until something like this happens to you.
“What they want is to frighten people so no one stops and bears witness,” Evelyn added. “If people have the courage to say, ‘No, what you’re doing is wrong and I’m not going to move on,’ then maybe one day, something will change.”

Then maybe one day, we will all live in the same city.

Oakland Police Chief Confronted & Shut Down at Justice 4 Alan Blueford Townhall

  

Alan Blueford murdered by Oakland Police

May 24, 2012 Davey D's Hip Hop Corner

Since the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, there have been closed to 30 Black or Brown people shot and killed by law enforcement or in the case of Trayvon, wannabe law enforcement. Many of these shootings have been highly questionable, meaning the person killed was unarmed or there are strong conflicting statements from either the police or witnesses.

Here in Oakland, California, the shooting death Alan Dwayne Blueford is one such killing.  Oakland police have been very shady with the stories they put forth to the public. It seems like a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, cast seeds of doubt and cover up their own mistakes.. Initially police said they were in a shoot out and Blueford shot the officer in the stomach.. Later the police said Blueford shot the officer in the leg..Next the police said that it was possible the officer was shot in the leg by another officer in a case of friendly fire..Finally it came out that the officer shot himself. He shot himself in the foot..

Many believe the officer shot himself after he killed Blueford and saw the young man was unarmed.. The police then double back and said a gun was recovered, the community has yet to see any evidence of finger prints , gun residue etc.. Many have concluded it was the officer planting a gun near the scene.. This would not be unsual in a city that in the past 10 years has had to shell out over 58 million dollars in wrongful death shootings and police brutality incidents. This would not be far-fetched in a city that was home to a rogue group of cops known as the Riders who were found to routinely plant drugs and guns on suspects. One of the Oakland Riders is a still a fugitive at large..

 

Adding to all this was the fact that Blueford was left to on the ground for 4 hours to die while the officer who lied and then finally admitted to shooting himself was treated. The public still does not know the name of the officer thanks to California’s Policeman’s Bill of Rights which prevents the public from knowing the name of officers involved in these and other brutality incidents.. Community investigators have revealed the officer who murdered Blueford is Miguel Masso a former military man who lives in Los Banos which is more than 100 miles outside of Oakland..

Blueford’s parents were not aware of their son’s death for more than 6 hours. They went down to the police station were treated like crap and not told for more than 2 hours. Their mistreatment led to the unusual move by Chief Howard Jordan to meet and apologize to the family.

In an attempt to do more damage control, OPD held a town hall meeting at Acts Full Gospel Church. Folks showed up only to discover the police chief would only answer questions that were pre-written. This annoyed folks to no end.. Then he seemed ill prepared or unable to answer basic questions.. He also hawked what many saw as blatant lies.. This led to more than half the room turning their backs on the chief and throwing up fist..

The chief cut the meeting short and left the building with angry residents in tow.. They got at him and let him know that there needs to be accountability and the community would not stand for his lies..The chief was definitely embarrassed.. Later that night we learned Oakland police came after one of the community members shown in the video holding a bullhorn..Chris M They claimed he assaulted an officer at the church… If that was the case when and where did that happen and why not arrest him on the spot?

Here’s a video of last night’s Townhall Meeting and dispersal..Please note I’m trying to re-render this so the quality is better… * quick note.. here’s the better quality video.. of last nights confrontation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCQ9F5hypow