CWL

anarcho-queer:

NYPD Officer Blows Whistle On Stop & Frisk,  Superior’s Told Him To Target “Male Blacks 14 to 21” (Must Read)

As hearings are under way to investigate New York City’s stop and frisk policy, one police officer is testifying that he was told by superiors to target young black men between the ages of 14 and 21.

Stop and frisk is a method of searching people in which a cop is able to stop someone he or she suspects of a crime, and is able to frisk that individual if they feel that there is some justification. New York City policy made 685,724 stops as part of the policy in 2011 alone. In total, they have made over 5 million stops, and 85 percent of those stopped were black or Latino. 88% were innocent, meaning they were not arrested or given a summons.

Officer Pedro Serrano, in court to testify yesterday, played a covert recording he’d obtained of an interraction with his superior where he was told the race of people to target, though not that he should stop everyone of that race:

Stop “the right people, the right time, the right location,” Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard saying on the recording.

“He meant blacks and Hispanics,” Officer Pedro Serrano, who made the secret recording, testified Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

“So what am I supposed to do: Stop every black and Hispanic?”Serrano was heard saying on the tape, which was recorded last month at the 40th Precinct in the Bronx.[…]

“I have no problem telling you this,” the inspector said on the tape. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”

During cross examination, City lawyer Brenda Cooke got Serrano to admit that McCormack never said he wanted Serrano to stop all blacks and Hispanics.

“Those specific words, no,” he told her.

The news about targeting black men tracks with yesterday’s revelations that the NYPD set quotas for arrests. It also explains the fact that, in 2011, NYPD made more stops of young black men than there actually are young black men in the city.

Serrano’s tape and testimony were introduced as evidence in a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk tactic brought by four black New Yorkers who claim they were targeted because of their race.

Also, the first of several tapes surreptitiously made by Brooklyn cop Adrian Schoolcraft made its debut at the trial. The audio he recorded proved that the police department ‘manipulated’ crime reports to make to it seem like crime decreased in NYC. 

After the NYPD found out about Adrian’s incriminating evidence, they broke into his apartment, handcuffed him and locked him in a insane asylum for 6 days against his will to silence him.

And so, since I could see that America itself is a society where there is no brotherhood and that this society is controlled primarily by racists and segregationists — and it is — who are in Washington, D.C., in positions of power. And from Washington, D.C., they exercise the same forms of brutal oppression against dark-skinned people in South and North Vietnam, or in the Congo, or in Cuba, or in any other place on this earth where they’re trying to exploit and oppress. This is a society whose government doesn’t hesitate to inflict the most brutal form of punishment and oppression upon dark-skinned people all over the world.

To wit, right now what’s going on in and around Saigon and Hanoi and in the Congo and elsewhere. They are violent when their interests are at stake. But all of that violence that they display at the international level, when you and I want just a little bit of freedom, we’re supposed to be nonviolent. They’re violent. They’re violent in Korea, they’re violent in Germany, they’re violent in the South Pacific, they’re violent in Cuba, they’re violent wherever they go. But when it comes time for you and me to protect ourselves against lynchings, they tell us to be nonviolent.

That’s a shame. Because we get tricked into being nonviolent, and when somebody stands up and talks like I just did, they say, “Why, he’s advocating violence!” Isn’t that what they say? Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see where one of these things has written into it that I’m advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I’ve only said that Black people who are the victims of organized violence perpetrated upon us by the Klan, the Citizens’ Council, and many other forms, we should defend ourselves. And when I say that we should defend ourselves against the violence of others, they use their press skillfully to make the world think that I’m calling on violence, period. I wouldn’t call on anybody to be violent without a cause. But I think the Black man in this country, above and beyond people all over the world, will be more justified when he stands up and starts to protect himself, no matter how many necks he has to break and heads he has to crack.

I saw in the paper where they — on the television where they took this Black woman down in Selma, Alabama, and knocked her right down on the ground, dragging her down the street. You saw it, you’re trying to pretend like you didn’t see it ‘cause you knew you should’ve done something about it and didn’t. It showed the sheriff and his henchmen throwing this Black woman on the ground — on the ground.

And Negro men standing around doing nothing about it saying, “Well, let’s overcome them with our capacity to love.” What kind of phrase is that? “Overcome them with our capacity to love.” And then it disgraces the rest of us, because all over the world the picture is splashed showing a Black woman a with some white brutes, with their knees on her holding her down, and full-grown Black men standing around watching it. Why, you are lucky they let you stay on earth, much less stay in the country.

Excerpt from After the Bombing / Speech at Ford Auditorium

“rioting”

thepeoplesrecord:

NYPD takes the life of another black male
June 18, 2012

On April 12, 2012, Laverne’s son Tamon Robinson, like Trayvon Martin, encountered someone who made a wrong assumption based on his age and the color of his skin. In Tamon’s case, it was a police officer, while in Trayvon’s case, it was a civilian, George Zimmerman. But in both cases, because the young men were African American, their lives were cut tragically short.

Tamon worked in as a barista at the Connecticut Muffin café on Lafayette Avenue in Fort Green, Brooklyn. On the side, he collected bricks, stones and other discarded building materials and sold them for scrap. Around 5:30 a.m., on the way to his car that morning, Tamon stopped to collect some old paving stones that the Seaview Houses were throwing away. He had permission from the building’s management to take them.

Officers in a patrol car spotted him and assumed he was stealing. When two officers began chasing him, Tamon ran toward the building where he had, until recently, lived with his mother. He had moved into his own apartment, but still had a key and stopped by to visit her every day.

He was barely 100 yards away from the entrance when a third officer drove a police cruiser onto the sidewalk and ran him down. A witness reported seeing Tamon fly up into the air and then land on the ground. Officers were overheard telling him to get up before picking him up and throwing the unconscious man onto the hood of the car. When they realized he was not responding, they finally called emergency medical services.

In some twisted irony, during a canvas looking for witnesses, the same officers knocked on Tamon’s mother’s door. Ms. Dobbinson was told there had been an accident and asked if she saw anything. She was unaware that the young man injured in the accident was her son. It was not until later—around 4 p.m.—that officers returned to her door to tell her that her son was in the hospital in a coma.

When Laverne Dobbinson arrived at the hospital, she found Tamon handcuffed to the bed in spite of the fact that he was in a coma. Initially, she was not allowed into the room to be with her son. Officials kept her and other family members from Tamon’s bedside where they could give comfort and talk to him. After two days, the police finally relented. Six days after his encounter with NYPD, his family made the painful decision to end life support.

Speaking with Tamon’s mother after the rally and march, I asked her to tell me about her son. “He was a good son, never got into any trouble,” she told me. “He never was involved in drugs or gangs. He was friendly; it was rare that he ever got angry with anyone. He was a hard worker and was trying to go to college.”

Source

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

New York City: Tens of thousands joined a silent march against “Stop-and-Frisk” and other racist police abuses, June 17, 2012.

Photo by G. Dunkel

I wish I had time to go to these.