I attended a Malcolm X meeting, right before he was assassinated.
At that meeting he said that there can be no organized crime, without
organized cops. That organized crime was so big an operation that it could
not
operate without the complicity of the cops. He was in the process to set
up cop
watch programs and even proposed the citizen arrest of unlawful cops, when
he was
assassinated.
I fully support the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement's (MXGM) monitoring of
police activity.
Constitutional Rights (CCR)
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=ACMSs0MD9o&Content=1006
CCR FILES CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT ON BEHALF OF THREE BLACK COPWATCH ACTIVISTS
ARRESTED WHILE MONITORING POLICE ACTIVITY
Lawsuit Filed as NYPD Data Shows Police Stops Increased by More than 500
Percent between 2002 and 2006, with Blacks Comprising More than Half of
All Stops
Synopsis
On April 26, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a
federal
civil rights lawsuit on behalf of three Black activists who were
manhandled
and arrested while peacefully and lawfully filming New York Police
Department
officers in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn as part of a
CopWatch program on the evening of February 9, 2005. All charges against
the three
were later dismissed.
The suit charges that the constitutional rights of the three plaintiffs
???
Lumumba Bandele, Djibril Toure, and David Floyd ??? were violated when
they were
falsely arrested and imprisoned by the police officers on the scene.
Recovered
videotape of the scene leading up to the arrests shows the men doing
nothing to
provoke the officers. The case will be filed in the Southern District.
Mr. Toure was also a plaintiff in CCR???s landmark racial profiling case
Daniels v. City of New York which led the NYPD to disband the notorious
Street
Crimes Unit in the wake of the Amadou Diallo shooting. In light of the
recently
released stop-and-frisk data and failure on the part of the City to comply
with
the consent decree, CCR is re-opening the Daniels case.
Said CCR attorney Kamau Franklin, ???These activists were taking steps to
stop
racial profiling in their community. In trying to stop the police from
violating the rights of others, they had their own rights violated.???
Mr. Bandele, Mr. Toure, and Mr. Floyd are all members of the Malcolm X
Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a community-based organization headquartered
in Brooklyn
that seeks to politically empower the Black community. On the evening of
February 9, 2005, the three were participating in MXGM???s CopWatch, a
program
modeled after police accountability activities of the Black Panthers that
seeks to
expose, document, and deter instances of police misconduct and abuse in
the
Black community by peacefully patrolling neighborhoods where police
misconduct
and violence are rampant.
When they observed a number of police officers and patrol cars near the
intersection of Greene Street and Throop Avenue, the three learned that
the
officers were in the process of arresting two people. They began to
videotape the
scene, remaining at all times at a lawful distance from the officers.
Officer
Thomas Stevens approached the three and ordered them to leave the area.
Mr.
Bandele, Mr. Toure, and Mr. Floyd complied with the request and backed
away from
the scene. Officer Stevens then pushed Mr. Bandele and Mr. Floyd, knocking
the
camera and Mr. Floyd to the ground. The three were then arrested and
placed in
custody.
Mr. Toure was charged with assault in the third degree, and Mr. Bandele,
Mr.
Toure, and Mr. Floyd were charged with resisting arrest and obstruction of
governmental administration, even though they did nothing illegal and did
not
resist arrest in any way. Officer Stevens later swore under oath that the
charges
were true, even though he knew them to be false. On July 17, 2006, all
charges against the three were dismissed by order of the Kings County
District
Attorney due to Officer Stevens??? failure to cooperate with the District
Attorney???s
office.
Said Lumumba Bandele, ???If there was really some justice in this system,
the
charges against us should have been dismissed immediately and instead
Stevens,
the cop that arrested us, should have been charged with abuse of
authority.???
In New York City, stop-and-frisks have increased by more than 500 percent
since 2002, from 97,296 in 2002 to 508,540 in 2006, according to data
released by
the NYPD in February of this year. More than half of those stopped were
Black; Whites made up only 11.1 percent of the stops. In comparison, 44
percent of
the NYC population is White and only 25 percent of the population is
Black.
========
The Historic Role of Police Brutality
in the
Black Community and African American Oppression
by
Roland Sheppard
The Police originated from the first slave patrols in 1704, which first
got
established in the South and lasted until 1861. Their original role was to
catch run away slaves. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=28023295
An important part of Black history is the destruction of Reconstruction,
which lasted for a decade after the Civil War, and the establishment of
Jim Crow
in the South and racial segregation in the North. Reconstruction
officially
ended with the "Compromise of 1876."
Reconstruction was lead by the Radical Republicans who had a majority in
Congress. They were advocates and fighters for racial equality. Their
position was
that the former slaves, or freedmen, who were homeless, landless and not
educated, had to be rewarded for their loyalty to the union and needed to
be made
whole in order to have equality.
The Radical Republicans tried to enforce the Confiscation Act of July
1862.
This act included giving land to the former slaves - 40 acres and a mule.
They
also set up the Freedmen's Bureau, designed to provide education, health
and
welfare for Black people in the transition from slavery to freedom.
President Andrew Johnson, who came into office after the assassination of
Abraham Lincoln, defended the former Southern slavocracy and violated the
law of
the land as passed over Johnson's veto by the Radical Republicans in
Congress.
Johnson's argument was that Congress was illegal, for it did not include
the
former Confederate states, who committed treason by forming the
Confederacy.
In response to Johnson's refusal to enforce the law of the land, the
Radical
Republicans tried unsuccessfully to impeach him. They lost by one vote. If
Johnson had been impeached, Benjamin Wade, who was an advocate for 40
acres and a
mule, Black and women's suffrage and radical reconstruction, would have
become president.
President Johnson ended the Freedmen's Bureau and opposed all actions to
give
freed male slaves the right to vote. He refused to enforce the law when
former slaves were prevented from exercising their rights by the violent
Southern
police forces and the Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in 1865. He also
supported
the Black Codes passed by several Southern states.
These codes said that unemployed Blacks were vagrants, who could be
arrested
and hired out to the highest bidder and forced to work for that person for
a
prescribed time. Employers were also given the right to physically punish
these
workers. These codes also made it illegal for Blacks to bear arms.
It was illegal force and violence, or terrorism, by the police and Ku Klux
Klan along with the restoration of former slave owners' property rights by
the
Democratic Party and non-radical Republicans that laid the basis for the
overthrow of Black Reconstruction after the Civil War and the
institutionalization
of legal segregation, Jim Crow. Blacks were and are indiscriminately
lynched
and framed up to enforce this segregation.
April 14, 1866, Thomas Nast Harpers Weekly Political Cartoon of Andrew
Johnson kicking out the Freedmen???s Bureau with his veto, with scattered
black
people coming out of it.
The major historical role of the police
- From that time to the present, the Black community has been a virtual
police
state. Police violence has been and is a necessary institution of the
ruling
class of the United States to enforce the ongoing re-segregation and
gentrification of society and to intimidate the Black minority and other
oppressed and
exploited minorities in this country from revolting against the racist
polices
of the government.
Massacres, tortures and assassinations of Blacks have continued unabated.
These acts of terrorism have been carried throughout this nation by the
police,
the government under the rule of both the Democratic and Republican
parties,
the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White
Brotherhood, the
Pale Faces, the '76 Association etc.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s effectively eliminated Jim Crow.
Today, it does not legally exist, but we are witnessing the drive of the
ruling
rich to make de facto Jim Crow the rule of the land. In fact, the public
schools
in this country are more segregated today than they were in the 1960s.
As the ruling class and their Black and white politicians are leading a
war
on those in poverty, they are turning prisons and the welfare system,
workfare,
into institutions of forced labor, de facto slavery. At the same time they
are systematically destroying affirmative action and re-institutionalizing
unequal opportunity for the Black masses. Police violence is as necessary
to this
process of re-subjugation of the Black community as it was for the
destruction
of Reconstruction.
Malcolm X explained that police brutality also induces periodic "police
riots" in order to further intimidate the Black community. Outspoken
critics of
police brutality are very often victims of the police and police violence.
This
violence goes hand in hand with the increase in hate crimes across the
land.
Mumia Abu-Jamal and Kevin Cooper are a prime example of "legal lynching"
by
the police forces of this country. Police violence and hate crimes and
hanging
nooses in the Southeast Sewage Plant in San Francisco and many other
jobsites
are part of the overall attack upon the gains made by the Civil Rights
Movement.
Mumia has been on death row and in jail for almost two decades. He was and
is
an outspoken critic of the police and was framed for the murder of a
policeman. To add insult to injury, while Mumia sits in jail, the
confessed killer of
the policeman is free to roam the streets!
In order to stop this process of de facto re-segregation and police
violence,
it is necessary to stop support to both the Republican Party and the
Democratic Party, the party of the Confederacy that overthrew
Reconstruction through
force and violence, and their control of the racist federal, state and
city
governments - and to once again return to the effective mass action
strategy of
the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in opposition to the government.
Historically, mass actions, like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on
Washington
etc., are the only activities that have proven to be effective.
For more information, read the Harvard Civil Rights Project's report at
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/separate_schools01.php.
Roland Sheppard is a writer and activist and former BA of the Painters
Union
in San Francisco.
This article was first printed in the San Francisco Bay View, National
Black
Newspaper www.sfbayview.com 4917 Third Street, San Francisco California
94124
Phone: (415) 671-0789, Fax: (415) 671-0316, Email: editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
This email was sent as a service by Roland Sheppard.
My website is http://web.mac.com/rolandgarret.
Read my book, The View From The Painter's Ladder is available at
Amazon.com
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