‘They set us up’: US police arrested over 10,000 protesters, many non-violent
Since George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 25 May, about 140 cities in all 50 states throughout the US have seen protests and demonstrations in response to the killing.
More than 10,000 people have been arrested around the US during the protests, as police forces regularly use pepper spray, rubber bullets, teargas and batons on protesters, media and bystanders. Several major US cities have enacted curfews in an attempt to stop demonstrations and curb unrest.
Jarah Gibson was arrested while non-violently protesting in Atlanta, Georgia, on 1 June.
“The police were there from the jump and literally escorted us the whole march,” said Gibson.
She said around 7.30pm, ahead of Atlanta’s 9pm city-wide curfew, police began boxing in protesters. While protesters were attempting to leave, Gibson tried to video-record a person on a bicycle who appeared to be hit by a police car and was arrested by police. She was given a citation for “pedestrian in a roadway,” and “refusing to comply when asked to leave”.
“The police are instigating everything and they are criminalizing us. Now I have my mugshot taken, my fingerprints taken and my eyes scanned. Now I’m a criminal over an illegal arrest,” added Gibson. “I want to be heard and I want the police to just abide by basic human decency.”
Ruby Anderson was arrested while non-violently protesting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 31 May. The police refused to provide a reason for her detention until they were placed in a police van, where they were told the charge was loitering. They were given a wristband that stated “unlawful assembly” and ultimately charged with disorderly conduct.
“While I was arrested, I was standing next to two white people who were doing the same thing as me, standing between a group of officers and a group of black teenagers. I was the only one arrested in my group of three, I was the only black person,” Anderson said.
Reports of excessive police force throughout the protests have emerged around the US. More than 130 reports of journalists being attacked by police have been recorded since 28 May.
On 2 June, six police officers in Atlanta, Georgia, were charged with excessive force during an arrest of two college students on 30 May. A staggering 12,000 complaints against police in Seattle, Washington, were made over the weekend of 30 May in response to excessive force at protests.
A Denver, Colorado, police officer was fired for posting on Instagram “let’s start a riot”. In New York City, videos surfaced of NYPD officers pointing a gun at protesters, driving an SUV into a crowd of protesters, swiping a protester with a car door, an officer flashing a white supremacy symbol, and another officer shoving a woman to the ground, which left her hospitalized.
Several protesters and bystanders around the US have been left hospitalized from rubber bullet wounds, bean bags, teargas canisters and batons, while police have reportedly torn down medical tents and destroyed water bottles meant for protesters.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dan Rojas was arrested on the morning of 27 May. Though there were no protests occurring at the time, Rojas had decided to clean up fragments of rubber bullets, teargas and frag canisters on the public sidewalk in his neighborhood when six police officers confronted him and arrested him.
“They put me in handcuffs, took my property off of me, and they shoved a local reporter out of the way. They put me in a squad car and arrested me for rioting at 10.30 in the morning, the day after a peaceful protest,” said Rojas, who was not released until over 48 hours later. “At the end of it no charges were filed, everything was dropped and I was never told the probable cause they had to arrest me.”
Several non-violent protesters arrested during demonstrations requested to remain anonymous for fear of police retaliation as they still face citations and pending charges. The protesters described police tactics of “kettling”, where protesters were surrounded and blocked by police forces from leaving, often until curfews took effect or arrests were made for obstructing a roadway.
“The curfews are a way to give police more power, exactly the opposite of what protesters want. These curfews, like most other ‘law and order’ tactics, will disproportionately impact the very same communities that are protesting against state-sponsored violence and brutality,” said Dr LaToya Baldwin Clark, assistant professor of law at UCLA.
One protester in Los Angeles, California, told how she was returning to her apartment before the city’s 6pm curfew, while police were blocking protesters and obstructing exits.
“I was arrested two streets away from my apartment, it had just turned 6pm,” said the protester. She noted during the arrests, bystanders were protesting against the arrests from their apartment balconies, while police were aiming rubber bullets, teargas and pepper spray at them.
“They handcuffed us all with zip tie handcuffs and left us in a police bus for about five hours … I asked for medical assistance and they denied it to me, I was handcuffed for over five hours with a bleeding hand that eventually turned purple until I was finally released.”
She was eventually released at 1am on 2 June, with a citation for being out past curfew.
“The police set us up to get arrested. They shut off the streets forcing us on to Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Once we were on the bridge, the police blocked both exits in front and behind us,” said a protester in Dallas, Texas, who was arrested on 1 June and later released without charges.
She added: “They shot teargas at us and shot a protester with a rubber bullet and it injured her hand. The police made us all get on the ground, proceeded to zip tie our hands together, lined us up on the side of the highway and left us there for hours.”
In Cincinnati, Ohio, a resident in a neighborhood where protests were occurring on 31 May saw several protesters were at risk of being caught outside past the city’s curfew at 8pm.
“It felt like a trap to me. I felt if I could pick some people up and take them to their cars, I could stop people from getting arrested, so I jumped in my car, drove down the street, saw a group of people hiding, they had their hands up, and they climbed into the car, and shut the doors. We tried to drive, but were stopped,” said the resident. “We were asked to leave the car, zip-tied on the side of the road, loaded on to a bus, and they detained us for a few hours doing paperwork.”
A protester in Houston, Texas, described police kettling her and other protesters before getting arrested on 31 May for obstructing a roadway.
“We weren’t allowed to go home,” she said. “We tried our best to go home and were told ‘no, you’re not leaving.’ From then on, the cops said anyone outside their circle is going to jail and they would push us further from the sidewalk. They had us closed in.”
THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!
Blacks not the only victims of rogue cops
THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!
Blacks not the only victims of rogue cops
The videos below are of a 2014 incident in Independence, Missouri where former policeman Timothy N. Runnels arrested Bryce Masters, a 17-year-old boy. The first video is two minutes and is very disturbing, especially the ending. The second video is 54 minutes and includes the arrival on the scene of backup and ambulance. The second video shows a brief split screen of what Masters shot of the incident before Runnels tased him into cardiac arrest.
The incident was covered in depth by The Intercept and by the website for Britain's Daily Mail. The incident was also covered at Officer.com. In 2018 in nearby Kansas City, the Star's Tony Rizzo reported: "Federal prosecutors later charged Runnels criminally with violating Masters' civil rights, and the former officer was sentenced in 2016 to four years in prison. Runnels, 35, is scheduled to be released from custody in January 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons." Here's the only clear photo of Runnels I could find on the Net. If you see him, steer clear.
Blacks are by no means the only victims of police brutality. Police departments must do a better job of identifying and quickly getting rid of any thugs on their payrolls, but they're being protected by the police unions. We need our police, but not the criminal rogues.
To watch the videos at YouTube, click on these URLs:
Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped).
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to
provide cover for Democratic governors and
mayors who have overseen brutal police
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.
Democrats announce toothless police reform bill
9 June 2020
With a great deal of rhetoric accompanied by a political stunt, the Democratic congressional leadership on Monday released its “Justice in Policing 2020” bill.
Prior to the press conference to present the measure, more than 20 Democratic lawmakers, all wearing African kente cloths, knelt in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing the 46-year-old African American worker.
The group of Democrats included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass and senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.
At the press conference, Bass, Pelosi, Schumer and other sponsors of the bill repeatedly cited the nationwide mass demonstrations against the murder of Floyd and touted their bill as a “transformational” and “bold” attack on police violence and systemic racism.
But their statements and the token character
of the reforms included in the bill make clear
that the measure is nothing of the kind.
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to
provide cover for Democratic governors and
mayors who have overseen brutal police
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.
It is also aimed at containing and dissipating social protests by workers and youth against not only racism and the fascistic Trump administration, but also the social inequality, repression and poverty that are embedded in the capitalist system and magnified by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democrats are well aware that even their collection of mild reforms has no chance of being passed by the Republican-controlled Senate or signed into law by President Trump. Just minutes after the Democrats’ press conference, Trump, who later met behind closed doors with law enforcement officials, tweeted: “This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”
The major provisions of the bill include:
* Changes in the wording of statutes dealing with police abuse that somewhat lower the legal threshold for obtaining a conviction. The bill alters the federal standard for criminal police behavior from “willfully” violating the constitutional rights of a victim to doing so “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
It also changes the standard for determining whether the use of force is justified from whether it is “reasonable” to whether it is “necessary.”
* It somewhat limits, but does not eliminate, the application of “qualified immunity” to police offenders. For the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has interpreted the “qualified immunity” doctrine, which applies to public officials pursuing their official duties, to vacate civil suits and throw out criminal cases against police who break the law or use unwarranted force.
Legal researchers Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark argued in 2019 that “qualified immunity permits law enforcement and other government officials to violate people’s constitutional rights with virtual impunity.” The Obama administration repeatedly intervened in Supreme Court cases to uphold the blanket use of “qualified immunity” to shield cops from civil suits or criminal prosecution.
* The bill limits, but does not eliminate, the transfer of military equipment to the police. Obama continued the practice of militarizing police departments with billions of dollars worth of military-grade weapons, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, drones and other tactical weapons.
* The bill creates a national register of police misconduct.
* It bans chokeholds.
* It establishes a grant program allowing—but not requiring—state attorneys general to create an independent process to investigate misconduct or excessive force.
* It requires body cameras for federal uniformed police officers and dashboard cameras for marked federal police vehicles. These federal forces comprise only a small fraction of the 687,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the US. The bill also mandates that state and local agencies use federal funds to “ensure” the use of body and dashboard cameras.
* The bill bans racial profiling.
* It grants subpoena powers to the civil rights division of the Justice Department for “pattern and practice” investigations of police departments.
* It makes lynching a federal hate crime.
At the press conference, Bass, who represents parts of South Los Angeles, went out of her way to profess her support for the police. “I am certain that police officers, professionals who risk their lives every day, are deeply concerned about their profession and do not want to work in an environment that requires their silence when they know a fellow officer is abusing the public,” she said.
She went on to present police officers as the unwitting victims of poor training and policing practices and a lack of “transparency.”
Pelosi called the bill a “transformational” and “structural change,” ran through its main provisions, and concluded by saying, “Police brutality is a heartbreaking reflection of an entrenched system of racial injustice in America.” She called the bill a “first step,” promising “more to come.”
New York Senator Schumer, known as the senator from Wall Street, referred nervously to the massive demonstrations that have continued in New York City and in cities and towns across the US for nearly two weeks, noting in particular their multi-racial and multi-ethnic diversity.
He then proceeded to define the issue of police violence exclusively in racial terms, saying, “The poison of racism affects more than just our criminal justice system. It runs much deeper than that. There are racial disparities in housing and health care, education, the economy, jobs, income and wealth and COVID has only placed a magnifying glass on them.”
This is a continuation of the narrative that has been employed by the ruling class, and particularly that faction represented by the Democratic Party, for more than 50 years, ever since the massive urban rebellions of the 1960s. Beginning with the Kerner Commission Report of 1968, there has been a concerted effort to portray the essential social category in America as race, rather than class.
BLOG EDITOR: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RELIED ON THE BLACK SLAVE CLASS UNTIL IT BECAME APPARENT THAT THE INVADING ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS WOULD MAKE A BETTER CLASS OF SLAVES.
ASK YOURSELF WHAT BARACK OBAMA EVER DID FOR BLACK AMERICA AS HE SABOTAGED HOMELAND SECURITY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING 'CHEAP' LABOR MEXICANS.
This was designed from the outset to divert attention from the class exploitation upon which capitalism is based and within which racism serves as a weapon to divide the working class. All of the African-American lawmakers at the Democrats’ press conference are wealthy beneficiaries of policies that have elevated a thin layer of blacks into the upper-middle class and the bourgeoisie, while leaving black workers, and the working class as a whole, in far worse circumstances than in the 1960s.
A reporter asked if the sponsors of the “Justice in Policing Act” supported calls for “defunding” the police that have been embraced by some local Democratic officials, who have generally defined it as diverting a small portion of the police budget to social services. Bass had previously made clear she did not support such calls and the campaign of Joe Biden released a statement Monday disavowing the demand.
Responding to the question, Pelosi said, “We want to work with our police departments. There are many who take pride in their work, and we want to be able to make sure the focus is on them.” She went on to warn against getting “into these questions that may come by the small minds of some.”
Government-employee unions—including those for police—put the power and interests of their workers above the public interest.
June 8, 2020
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, and the ensuing protests and urban riots, have brought police departments under enormous scrutiny and widespread hostility. Liberals and conservatives alike have identified police unions as a barrier to salutary reform. They aren’t wrong—and union contracts are one reason why reforming police departments is so hard. But while Left and Right may agree about police unions, those on the left would not make a broader connection: that the problems posed by police unions in particular are similar to those with public-sector unions in general.
Liberal sympathy for organized labor doesn’t extend to police unions because cops are seen as the “bad proletariat.” Liberals try to paint the problems of police unions as unique to law enforcement, rather than endemic to unionized government. In the wake of the Floyd killing, some have called for the abolition of police forces—and, in Minneapolis, the city council has announced that it will “begin the process” of disbanding the city’s police department. On the other side, conservative aversion to government unions often stops short of police unions because conservatives worry that criticism of cop unions will be mistaken for criticism of the police. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for example, excluded police unions from Act 10, which dramatically weakened public-sector unions in his state.
The deeper problem is that unionization and collective bargaining have made it almost impossible to bring about meaningful reform of state and local government, policing included. The consequences are huge, because the inability to reform government means that performance suffers and public trust in key institutions declines.
Collective bargaining is not fundamentally about products or services—whether public safety, education, automobiles, or anything else—but about the power and interests of workers and management. Public-sector unions are in the business of winning better salaries and benefits, protecting job security, and advancing their members’ occupational interests. Organizational incentives, and state law, ensure that union leaders prioritize these amenities.
Police and public schools are the institutions of government with which Americans most frequently engage. Police protect our most vulnerable citizens and allow communities to thrive. Schools offer opportunities for social mobility. There are thousands of heroic and devoted police officers and school teachers. But unionization and collective bargaining have enmeshed these two crucial government functions in red tape that too often protects the inept and abusive.
Collective bargaining in the public-safety and educational sectors strips government executives of the tools they need to supervise and manage their workforces effectively. Police chiefs and school principals struggle to weed out poor performers. A few bad actors can undermine an entire organizational culture.
Upholding the law presents unique challenges, and police can have adversarial relationships with the communities whom they serve. Consequently, police-union contracts contain myriad formal rules and procedures designed to protect police officers from the inevitable complaints—some justified, others not—that arise in the course of duty. Many big-city union contracts limit officer interrogation procedures after alleged wrongdoing, mandate the deletion of disciplinary records, and require cumbersome grievance proceedings.
Language spelling out these procedures often makes up the largest part of any contract—it’s roughly 20 percent of the New York City police officers’ contract, for example. These provisions allow both police unions and individual officers to challenge personnel actions by their superiors. If the matter can’t be settled by appealing up the chain of command, it is sent to binding arbitration. Arbitrators often split the difference and avoid dismissing officers. For instance, in 2018, a Seattle arbitrator reinstated—with back pay—an officer fired for punching a handcuffed, intoxicated woman. The nuisance involved in dealing with grievances, and the prospect that an appeal will reverse the outcome anyway, can dissuade supervisors from initiating discipline procedures against poor performers.
Police officers accused of misconduct are, consequently, rarely disciplined or punished insofar as investigations are long, highly regulated, and allow for frequent appeals. One study found that the worst 5 percent of officers in the Chicago Police Department accounted for a third of all civilian complaints. But few were ever disciplined or removed. Jason Van Dyke, the officer who killed an unarmed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, was among the officers with the most civilian complaints. But he remained on active duty.
Teachers also enjoy extensive job protections that make them nearly impossible to fire. State laws and union contracts create a labyrinth of paperwork and processes. In most school districts, over 95 percent of teachers receive satisfactory ratings and get tenure (which means more job protections) after three years on the job. Many principals don’t even bother trying to dismiss bad teachers because of the costs involved. One study found that dismissing a veteran teacher for poor performance takes a minimum of two years; in Los Angeles and San Francisco, it takes at least five years.
Even teachers accused of sexual misconduct rarely lose their jobs. Under many state laws or union contracts, an independent investigator—usually an independent law firm or the school superintendent—first vets any accusation. Then the case goes before an arbitrator chosen by the teachers’ union and school district. Usually arbitrators’ decisions split the difference and result in suspensions or fines rather than dismissal.
As a result of such protections, New York City infamously put hundreds of teachers in “rubber rooms,” where they were paid full salaries and accrued benefits but could not interact with kids. This “program” cost the city some $800 million a year. Unable to end it fully, the city converted it into the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), which continued to pay teachers not to teach to the tune of $105 million a year. In 2019, 930 teachers held spots in the ATR—perhaps 25 of whom were there because of charges of misconduct—costing the city nearly $100 million in salaries and benefits.
Within the confines of collective bargaining, public executives need to push for a recovery of management rights. Only then might school principals and police chiefs have a fighting chance of improving their organizations. Going further, states may want to revisit the extent to which work rules that establish disciplinary procedures should even be the subject of collective bargaining. Greater accountability in state and local government would be better for everyone, good teachers and cops included. Weeding out poor performers will improve public services, protect communities, boost organizational morale, and spur upward mobility. It’s time to put the mission of public agencies ahead of job protections for public workers.
Daniel DiSalvo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and professor of political science at the City College of New York-CUNY.
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