Democrats and media silent on execution of Michael Reinoehl by US Marshals
10 September 2020
Six days after a multi-agency fugitive task force led by US Marshals tracked down, cornered and killed Michael Reinoehl, the corporate media and the Democrats remain silent on his execution in a hail of bullets in Lacey, Washington.
On Wednesday, OregonLive.com reported, on the basis of search warrants and police affidavits, that a Portland detective assigned to the US Marshals Pacific Northwest Violent Offenders Task Force obtained “pen register” and “trap and trace” warrants from a Portland-area judge one hour and 14 minutes before Reinoehl was shot dead.
A Washington State Patrol Crime Lab worker looks at evidence markers in the early morning hours of Friday, Sept. 4, 2020, in Lacey, Wash. at the scene where Michael Reinoehl was gunned down by police in a hail of gunfire. (Photo Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)The court-approved warrants permitted the task force to track the GPS location and cell phone call data from Reinoehl’s cell phone and pinpoint his precise location.
Although the OregonLive.com report says it “appears” that the US Marshals “already had acted on other information that Reinoehl was in the Lacey area,” it is more likely that the warrants were an after-the-fact formality for police electronic surveillance tracking that was initiated as soon as the manhunt for Reinoehl commenced.
Reinoehl’s killing came several hours after he was charged with the murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a Trump supporter and right-wing vigilante, at a protest in Portland, Oregon on August 29. Just minutes before Reinoehl’s death was announced, President Donald Trump tweeted a demand that the police take action to apprehend Danielson’s killer. “Do your job, and do it fast. Everybody knows who this thug is,” Trump declared.
A second report on Wednesday by OregonLive.com included a statement by an eyewitness to the shooting of Reinoehl at an apartment complex in the 7600 block of Third Way Southeast in Lacey. Nathanial Dingess, 39, speaking through his attorney, said he saw Reinoehl walking toward his car holding a cell phone in his hand when two unmarked law enforcement vehicles converged on him and began firing.
Reinoehl’s death was a state murder carried out with the endorsement of Attorney General William Barr and President Trump. On Monday, Trump hailed the killing of Reinoehl, saying, “If somebody is breaking the law, there has got to be a form of retribution.”Dingess said no warnings or commands were issued as Reinoehl ducked for cover near his car. He was unable to enter his vehicle because it was blocked by the police cars. “Officers shot multiple rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl before issuing a brief ‘stop’ command, quickly followed by more rapid-fire shooting by additional officers,” Dingess said. He added that he never saw a handgun in Reinoehl’s possession.
Taking care not to disrupt their own campaign for “law and order” in response to the mass protests against police violence across the country, Democratic Party presidential and vice presidential candidates Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris have remained silent on the extra-judicial murder of Reinoehl. They have similarly said little or nothing about the murder of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last month by Kyle Rittenhouse, a Trump supporter and armed vigilante who traveled to Kenosha to join other far-right vigilantes in attacking anti-police violence protesters.
In an interview with VICE News, published on September 3, Michael Foster Reinoehl, 48, said that he had been identified as the shooter of Danielson within an hour of the incident on August 29. Of the shooting, he said: “I had no choice. I mean, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn’t going to do that. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
He went on: “You know, lots of lawyers suggest that I shouldn’t even be saying anything, but I feel it’s important that the world at least gets a little bit of what’s really going on because there’s been a lot of propaganda put out there.”
Reinoehl described the arrival of the caravan of right-wing counter-protesters in Portland. He said, “There were 600 vehicles… I saw more of their vehicles than real citizen vehicles. It felt like the beginning of a war. It was a free for all and the police were letting it happen.”
Debunking the presentation of the protesters by the right wing and the media, Reinoehl said, “What they’ve done is they’re trying make it look like we are all terrorists. And they’re trying to make me look like a murderer. I’ve noticed that they keep saying that it’s not clear that it’s related to the protests. That’s a lie. They know that it’s related to the protests.”
On the question of Antifa, Reinoehl said, “They want to paint a picture of Antifa having major involvement. A lot of people don’t understand what Antifa represents. And if you just look at the basic definition of it, it’s just anti-fascist, and I am 100 percent anti-fascist. I am not a member of Antifa. I am not a member of anything. Honestly, I hate to say it, but I see a civil war right around the corner.”
Little of this interview has been carried by the corporate news media, which falsely repeated Attorney General Barr’s claim that Reinoehl was a member of Antifa. The media reported without criticism the official reports from the US Marshals Service that Reinoehl was gunned down because “initial reports indicate the suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers,” and that “as they attempted to apprehend him, there was gunfire.” Officials later acknowledged that they “are not able to confirm at this time if he fired shots.”
Protests against police violence in Portland and other cities have continued since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in late May. With the encouragement of the White House, groups of right-wing militias and vigilantes have carried out acts of violence against the demonstrators with increasing frequency.
In August, a counter-protester was arrested in Portland for firing a weapon into a crowd of Black Lives Matter demonstrators, and Alan Swinney, a member of the neo-fascist Proud Boys, brandished a gun and pointed it at protesters.
Public outrage over the police killing of Reinoehl has been expressed on social media. Portland-area artist and musician David Rovics wrote a song about the murder titled “A Song for Michael Reinoehl” and posted it on Facebook and YouTube. The lyrics to the song include the following:
For years it was predicted someday Someone would retaliate
With all those weapons on display With that much fear and hate
Michael Reinoehl he was sought For murder, the alleged crime
But he was never caught Or given a chance for prison time
The cops came to the property From local deputies to feds
They came to kill their enemy They wanted this anarchist’s head
Speaking to the World Socialist Web Site, Rovics said of the killing of Reinoehl: “All we know is what the police say, which we also know is completely unreliable. But even according to what the police have said, he did not fire at them, and none of their body cams were on. So, based on that lack of information, my educated guess is Michael was executed.
“As for why, I’d say that’s because many of the cops, at every level—city, state, federal—are sympathetic with fascists and not at all sympathetic with antifascists, and this has been true since fascism has existed as a political philosophy.”
When asked about the response of the corporate media, Rovics said, “What they’re doing with him, as with so many other cases, is treating the police report as if it’s remotely believable. They know it’s not—or they should know. Pretending they don’t know this is collusion, it’s a sort of gas-lighting. So, basically, they’re giving us the impression that he did something other than raise his hands up and surrender, and thus, the police had some kind of justification to fire 40 bullets at him.”
Salt Lake City police engage in a cover-up after shooting autistic 13-year-old boy multiple times
10 September 2020
Sparking international outrage, 13-year-old Linden Cameron remains in serious condition at the Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, after a still unidentified police officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department shot him multiple times Friday while he was suffering a mental health crisis in his home.
News of the heinous shooting of a young unarmed child has rippled through the world with autistic persons, their families, friends and community members taking to social media to voice their support and horror. A Go Fund Me page established for Linden’s medical bills has already exceeded $75,000 as of this writing.
Linden Cameron, 13, recovering in the hospital after being shot multiple times by an unidentified Salt Lake City Police officerExemplifying the brutal class nature of police violence, the shooting of Cameron, who is white, comes less than a week after police body camera footage was released showing the March 23 police killing of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old black man in Rochester, New York.
In both instances concerned family members reached out to emergency services to assist loved ones experiencing a mental health crisis and in both cases police responded with deadly force, killing Prude and leaving Linden with a long, painful road to recovery.
Golda Barton, Cameron’s mother, in interviews with KSL TV and KUTV, says her son has injuries to his shoulder, both ankles, intestines and bladder. Barton had called emergency services and requested a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) to assist her in transporting her son, who had previously been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, to the hospital. Barton was under the impression that police would use “the most minimal force possible.”
Barton had just returned to work for the first time in a year last Friday, leaving Cameron at home. According to Barton, her son "has bad separation anxiety” and she received a call at work that he was having an emotional episode. As Barton drove home she called 911 and requested a CIT officer to come help.
According to a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Police Department, detective Michael Ruff, all of the officers are “certified” in de-escalation techniques and new recruits are required to have 40 hours of crisis-intervention training.
“We’re very comfortable with the program we used and with the individuals who are teaching it,” Ruff said in an interview with the Associated Press following the shooting. While declining to state what steps or decisions might have led the police to unload multiple rounds into a child, Ruff reiterated, “there’s more than one way to be CIT trained.”
While on the phone with emergency services Barton explained that her son was unarmed and that “he doesn’t have anything, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and screaming. He’s a kid, he's trying to get attention, he doesn’t know how to regulate.”
“I heard the guns and the yelling and the guns, and then I sat there in my car for what felt like a long time and I was waiting for someone to walk over to me because I didn’t know what just happened,” Barton explained. “And I was like OK, um, OK … they just unloaded a whole clip in my son, and probably he’s dead because he’s so small.”According to Barton, once Cameron saw the officers arrive at the house he got scared and ran away. Barton met officers at the front door of her home, who told her to go wait in her car, while they apprehended her son. Barton recalled in an emotional interview that within five minutes she heard officers yell at her son, “get down on the ground,” followed by several gunshots.
Barton says she then saw police put handcuffs on her son as he was laying silent on the ground. She says she did not know if he was alive or dead and officers refused to tell her why they shot him. “He's a small child. Why didn't you just tackle him? He's a baby. He has mental issues.”
Linden’s older brother Wesley Cameron spoke to local media regarding Linden’s injuries: “He said he can’t feel any feeling in his left hand. From my understanding he got shot in both feet,” Wesley said. “So now we’ll never be able to do the things we used to do, like longboard and play video games together.”
Barton continued, “You are big police officers with massive amounts of resources. Come on. Give me a break.”
Data compiled by the US Census Bureau confirms Barton’s point. If one were to add up all of the annual budgets of police departments across the US as of 2017 it would total over $115 billion, which is larger than every other country's military budget besides China and US.
While unlimited funding is made available for the special bodies of armed men, as the WSWS has previously reported, funding for vital public health infrastructure, including mental health services has been reduced by billions under both Democratic and Republican administrations in every state for over 30 years.
Police, as is standard procedure when covering up their crimes, are refusing to release any information pertaining to the incident including how many times Cameron was shot or why the officer determined it was necessary to use deadly force on a child who weighs less than 100 pounds. Bodycam footage of the incident does exist, however the department has stated it will not release it for “10 business days...as this is an active investigation.”
Immediately after the shooting in an early Saturday morning press conference, Salt Lake City police spokesman Sergeant Keith Horrocks trotted out the standard justifications for police brutality, stating that officers were called to the address for a “violent psych issue” involving a juvenile “having a mental episode” and “making threats to some folks with a weapon.”
As of this writing, no “weapon” has been recovered. In follow up interviews, Barton has denied that her son was violent towards officers or that he had a weapon.
On Sunday, Salt Lake City’s Democratic mayor Erin Mendenhall issued a brief statement labeling the incident a “tragedy” while giving her support to the “investigation,” which she expects “to be handled swiftly and transparently for the sake of everyone involved.”
Demonstrating the “transparent” attitude endemic to police departments around the world who routinely cover-up and get away with vicious crimes against working class adults and youth, Salt Lake City Detective Greg Wilking, in an interview with CNN, refused to state whether Cameron had a weapon, or “what the officers’ perceived threats were,” adding, “Mom can say whatever she wants, but there's this investigation that has to happen and this process that has to take place.”
In stark contrast to the brutal indifference the police have shown Barton and her family, on social media thousands of people have come forward to share their outrage and similar stories. One commenter wrote on Facebook, “As a father of an autistic 14 year old [who] is very similar, I am more than furious. My son has had a number of run ins with the police, when his emotions overwhelm him, and we have been lucky. However, one deputy warned me to ‘deal with him myself, because I’ll hurt him if I do it.’ Now I am afraid to call them at all. For good reason.”
A study conducted by the Treatment Advocacy Center found that people with severe untreated mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by police and are involved in nearly 1 in 4 fatal police shootings. The question of allocating appropriate and necessary resources and training so that all have access to the necessary health care is a class question. It cannot be resolved through “reforming” or “defunding police” who do not exist to protect workers and their families, but to safeguard the interests of the ruling elite and violently dispatch any “perceived threats,” no matter how small, to themselves.
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