US police kill 29 during
first week of 2018
By George Gallanis
9 January 2018
How many people will the United State police kill in 2018? If the
death toll keeps pace with the 29 killed in the first seven days of the year
will finally top 1,500. According to the killedbypolice.net, the first week of
2018 marks the deadliest first week of any year since 2013 when the site began
counting police killings in the US.
Almost all of the killings follow a general logic: police kill
anyone they suspect to be a threat, regardless of how severe or even real the
threat. And, in many cases, the dead led lives beset by poverty, mental
illness, and violence of all forms.
On the early morning of January 1, 2018, a woman called 911
informing them about a woman threatening to kill herself and her children at
the mobile home of Mark Parkinson in Walker County, Georgia.
Three Walker County cops arrived to the home shortly and began to
knock repeatedly on the door, declaring they were the police and to open the
door. Sleeping inside were Parkinson, his wife Diana, his daughter Amy Gass and
his two grandchildren. The pounding by the police awoke the three dogs inside
the home who began to bark, awakening the family. According to his daughter,
Parkinson then grabbed his gun out of fear and proceeded to the kitchen with
his wife Diana where they heard banging from outside.
Only a few seconds later, the cops standing outside spotted
Parkinson with his gun through a kitchen window. Shooting three rounds, Officer
John Chandler shot Parkinson in his jugular vein, located in his throat,
causing him to bleed profusely.
His wife Diana desperately called his daughter Amy, a registered
nurse, for help. With little to be done, she applied pressure to his neck but
could not save him from dying on the floor of their home.
Attorney Larry Stagg, the attorney for Parkinson’s daughter, Amy
Gass, said the call came from Amy’s mother-in-law, the mother or her estranged
husband, Steven Gass. So far, no evidence suggests there was any intent by
Parkinson’s daughter to harm herself or her children. The reason behind the
emergency call remains unclear.
On January 4, 2018 at 730 p.m., Boise, Idaho police pulled over
Robert Hansen and a female acquaintance for a routine traffic stop.
According to the police, Hansen, who sat in the backseat, pulled
out a handgun during the traffic stop and threatened the officers and the woman
driving the car. Allegedly, the officers could not calm Hansen down and shot
him in the head, killing him. Two officers shot him: Officer K. Zubizarreta and
Officer A. Crist, both are ten year veterans of the Boise police. Crist
previously shot and killed another person in 2016, a killing for which he has
since been cleared of all wrongdoing.
According to the local news
outlet, KTVP, “Police say it is too early to tell whether Hansen
fired his own gun before he was shot.”
Reports reveal Hansen to have been a very troubled young man.
According to the Idaho Department of Correction, before his death, Hansen was
listed as fugitive out of Twin Falls County in Idaho. He previously served time
in prison for domestic battery, aggravated DUI and leaving the site of an
accident resulting in injury or death.
Amongst the 29 dead, exist many similar stories to Hansen’s.
Charles Smith Jr., 17, of Little Rock, Arkansas, was shot and
killed by police on Sunday after he allegedly fired a gun at police during a
traffic stop. No police were harmed.
Richard Rangel, 21, of Round Rock, Texas, while allegedly in the
process of stealing a car, reportedly opened fire at police as they confronted
him. He was subsequently shot by a police officer and soon after died from his
wounds. Again, no police were harmed
There is also a yet-unnamed man in Tacoma, Washington who was
allegedly drunkenly crawling outside his burning home with a rifle in hand
Sunday night. As firefighters fought to put out the fire, seven police officers
mobilized to shoot and kill the man after he refused to put down his weapon and
allegedly opened fired. As in the previous incidents no police were harmed.
The ultimate propellant of killings by US police officers is the
capitalist system which relies on the police, a force diametrically opposed and
hostile to the working class and poor, to enforce ever growing levels of social
inequality.
Along with the constant slashing of social programs and
destruction of jobs which once provided a decent standard of living millions of
dollars continue to be poured into the police year after year for the
procurement of new military hardware, guns and batons for which to repress and
kill.
American Civil
Liberties Union sues DC Police for attacking inauguration protests
By Harvey
Simpkins and Nick Barrickman
9 January 2018
A civil lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
alleges members of the Washington, DC police department assaulted and deprived
hundreds of protesters, including a 10-year-old child and his mother, of their
constitutional rights as they peacefully protested during Trump’s January 20
inauguration last year.
Last week the ACLU amended its case to include Gwen Frisbie-Fulton
and her child, referred to by his initials “A.S.,” on the list of plaintiffs.
The lawsuit includes four additional plaintiffs: Shay Horse, an independent
photojournalist covering the protests, legal observer Judah Ariel, as well as
protesters Milo Gonzalez and Elizabeth Lagesse, all of whom were swept up in
indiscriminate police raids during last January’s inaugural protests.
The lawsuit names as defendants the District of Columbia, its
police force, as well as 27 specific officers, including eight supervisors who
oversaw the arrests.
The ACLU’s filing details the brutality and repression dealt to
protesters and bystanders for seeking to express their political opposition to
the Trump administration or by merely being in the vicinity of those who were:
“During the [protest] and then while detaining demonstrators for
hours, police fired pepper spray, stingballs, and flash-bang grenades at crowds
of demonstrators, journalists, and legal observers, frequently without warning
or justification. In the course of the roundup and subsequent processing of
demonstrators, police held detainees for hours without food, water, or access
to toilets; handcuffed detainees so tightly as to cause injury or loss of
feeling; and subjected some detainees to manual rectal jabbing.”
In a blog post explaining the events, Frisbie-Fulton said, “After
we spent a few hours protesting, I learned that a friend was being detained.
When we got to the location, people had gathered across from where a large
group of protestors had been cornered by police. [My son] stood on the base of
a lamp post so he could wave to the people he knew. He chanted ‘Let them go!’
gleefully with other protesters. We talked with friends. We shared some of the
snacks I had packed in my backpack. We were there for more than half an hour
without incident.”
However, without warning, the police began attacking the
protesters with pepper spray. “An officer pulled out pepper spray a little ways
away from us. I told [my son] it was time to go,” Frisbie-Fulton said, adding
“as we tried to leave, the police line rushed forward, knocking [him] down.
Instinctually, I jumped on top of him, rounding my back to create a pocket
under my body so he wouldn’t be crushed. I felt people being knocked around
above us and I could hear [my son] crying under me. When I was able, I stood up
with [him] in my arms and turned to leave again. I was blocked by police
officers; I asked if I could go,” to which an officer, with typical contempt
for democratic rights, told her “You shouldn’t have brought your kid.”
Police officers continued to block her way, as clouds of pepper
spray surrounded her and the police set off flash-bang grenades to disorient
the demonstrators. In an effort to get away from the police and to safety,
Frisbie-Fulton carried her son towards the protesters. Another protester
assisted her, taking her son and running with him away from the dangers posed
by the police. Other protesters surrounded her son in an effort to protect him
from further harm, as “his face was red and splotchy from either crying or
being exposed to pepper spray,” Frisbee-Fulton writes.
Video of the police indiscriminately
using pepper spray against protesters and, at the 57-second mark,
Frisbee-Fulton running with her son in her arms can be seen here.
The police are also accused of unlawfully failing to give a
dispersal order before deploying pepper spray and flash-bang grenades against
demonstrators. The ACLU seeks damages for violations of the constitutional
rights to free expression, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and
due process. It also raises claims for assault and battery, false arrest and
imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violations of
the DC First Amendment Assemblies Act.
The ACLU’s amended complaint comes nearly two weeks after a jury
found six protesters not guilty on all charges stemming from the inauguration
day protests. An additional 188 defendants are scheduled for trial, in groups
of six or seven, through 2018. While at least six of the remaining defendants
have had their charges reduced to misdemeanors, most remain accused of felony
charges that could land them behind bars for more than six decades, despite
many of the accused having nothing to do with the limited amount of property destruction
which occurred within a section of the protest.
Like the DC police physical assault of protesters, the federal
government’s lawsuit is intended to intimidate and silence dissent against the
right-wing policies of one of the most detested and reactionary administrations
in US history.
One of the plaintiffs, journalist Shay Horse, stated in the ACLU
complaint that he “felt like they were using molestation and rape as
punishment” when he was subjected to aggressive rectum examinations. “It felt
like they were trying to break me and the others—break us so that even if the
charges didn’t stick, that night would be our punishment,” Horse said.
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