BLOG EDITOR: THESE FUCKERS KNOCKED A MAN TO THE GROUND AND WALKED OFF AS HE BLED FROM THE HEAD.
COPS RELY ON A LEGAL SYSTEM THAT IS ROTTEN TO THE CORE. THESE THUGS KNOW THAT A LAWYER-JUDGE WOULD LET THEM OFF IF THERE WERE EVER PROSECUTED. FEW EVER ARE!
All 57 members of the Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team resigned on Friday in response to the department suspending two officers after a video surfaced showing them shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground.
Police kill unarmed 22-year-old man in Vallejo, California
6 June 2020
Police officers shot and killed an unarmed man in the parking lot of a Walgreens in Vallejo, California Tuesday, during the on-going wave of popular protests against police brutality around the United States and internationally.
Sean Monterrosa, a 22-year old resident of
Vallejo, was gunned down by officers from
inside an unmarked police cruiser while he
was on his knees, with his arms in the air.
Monterossa was unarmed, though officers claimed that they feared an object in his pocket—which turned out to be a hammer—was a gun.
Sean Monterrosa
At this point, the only details about the killing have come from the official police account and a press conference held by Police Chief Shawny Williams on Wednesday.
According to the police, in the early hours of Tuesday officers responded to a call about potential looting in a neighborhood Walgreens. They found about a dozen people in the parking lot, who immediately fled in two vehicles on seeing the police cruiser. Monterossa, dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, appeared to have been left behind. He immediately went down on his knees and began raising his arms. According to Williams, an officer who drew up in a second, unmarked car “perceived a threat” at this moment and fired five shots into Monterossa through the windshield of the car. The young man was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after.
While refusing to answer reporters’ questions about whether he thought the use of force was excessive, Williams waxed eloquent about the horrors of the “looting and burglaries” that had made Monday a “horrific night” for his department. The police, he said, had had to deal with an “orchestrated, organized assault on our city,” which is why they had welcomed the deployment of the National Guard.
The Vallejo Police Department has released no details about the officer responsible for the killing, other than to say that he was an “18 year veteran of the force” and that he had been placed on paid administrative leave. However, they seem to have no such hesitation about the victim. The department has let it be known that Monterrosa had criminal record and reviewed it in detail for the media.
Tried and tested though it might be, the right-wing tactic of blackening the reputation of a victim is particularly disgusting in this context. Even if Monterossa had a criminal record a mile-long, that does not in any shape or form justify his murder by police, who had no idea who he was while unloading bullets into him. The claim that armed officers, inside the safety of a car were somehow threatened by a lone man in a parking lot, who was on his knees and raising his arms up, is patently ridiculous. Making it a point to publicize the victim’s supposed criminal record is nothing short of grotesque.
The picture of Monterossa that has emerged from his family, friends and larger community is starkly different from that being painted by the police. The son of immigrants from Argentina, Monterossa was working as a security guard and a carpenter at the time of his killing. His father had been a surgeon in Argentina, and his mother a professional dancer. But they had settled into blue-collar work after migrating to the United States. Monterossa was committed to providing a better life for his parents and his friends and colleagues attest to his involvement in improving the lives of his community at large.
His two sisters told the San Francisco Chronicle that Monterossa had been falsely accused of a few petty crimes and stopped by the police in part because of the way he dressed and the fact that he was covered in tattoos. But he did not have any prior record. In a grim irony, the last text he sent his sisters was asking them to sign a petition protesting against the police murder of George Floyd.
The Vallejo Police Department has a well-established track record of brutality and murder. In 2012, Vallejo officer Sean Kenney made national headlines when he shot and killed three people within five months. Kenney retired in 2019 in part because of his injuries from a 2017 incident, in which he shot and seriously injured Vallejo resident Kevin DeCarlo for supposedly ramming Kenney’s unmarked police car. In February 2018, Vallejo Ofc. Ryan McMahon shot and killed Ronell Foster, after attempting to stop Foster for not having a light on his bicycle. In February 2019, six Vallejo officers fired dozens of shots at Willie McCoy, 20, an up and coming Bay Area rap artist, who was asleep in his car at a Taco Bell drive thru.
The fact that this latest murder has taken place in the context of the massive on-going protests against police brutality is chillingly telling. As Adante Pointer, a civil rights lawyer who has long represented Vallejo families, told the Guardian: “The eyes of the world are on policing and yet your officers still feel comfortable enough to shoot someone under what are the most questionable circumstances? If they could do this during the light of the George Floyd protests and world scrutiny, you can only imagine what they do in the dark of the night when no one is looking.”
Maher: Response to Crimes in LA ‘a Little Slow’ – ‘Blue Wall of Silence’ Needs to End
2:27
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that the response to crimes in Los Angeles over the past week was “a little slow” and stated that the “blue wall of silence” needs to break and the officers “who watch and do crowd control for atrocities, they’re not good either.”
Maher began by praising police chiefs who have knelt and marched with protesters. He added, “I mean, forever, we’ve been talking about bad cops, bad apples, and then the vast majority of cops, [are] good cops, but the real new rule is, you can’t anymore get away with, this is a bad cop, and any cops who aren’t actually committing the crime are good. The ones who watch and do crowd control for atrocities, they’re not good either. That has to be the new standard.”
He further stated, “‘If you see something, say something’ has to apply to police, too. You can’t get away with crimes on account of being the people who are supposed to stop crimes. And speaking of stopping crimes, we were a little slow to get to that in LA this week. I mean, sometimes, I feel we’re getting the worst of both worlds, the abusive part of policing, but without the law and order part. I’ve said many times in discussing the police, civilization is a mile wide and an inch deep, so when people say, cops are all that stands between civilization and chaos, absolutely, I agree. Cops are the badasses who deal with the dregs in an ugly business, but if cops want us to give them a little extra room to be tough because they’ve got a bad, dangerous job, then they’ve got to do the bad, dangerous job. Which they have also done plenty of this week, to be fair. This is tough stuff now. But it was frustrating watching it on TV last Sunday. … It looked like Black Friday, but without cash registers.”
Maher also said that we need to do a better job vetting the people who become police officers.
Maher concluded, “Tough guys have to do tough things. Right now, it’s easy to spot the toughest police officers. They’re the ones telling their fellow cops, you’ve got to stop this shit. A crack has been made in the blue wall of silence, please, let it break down even further, altogether, or else we’re going to be in the streets again and again, all the time.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
57-Member Buffalo Police Team Resigns Over Officers’ Suspension
1:30
All 57 members of the Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team resigned on Friday in response to the department suspending two officers after a video surfaced showing them shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground.
The Thursday footage shows the man approaching officers amid a George Floyd protest in Niagara Square and an officer pushing the man, causing him to tumbled backward and fall. Upon hitting his head, blood could be seen running down the side of his face and onto the pavement.
Just about an hour ago, police officers shove man in Niagara Square to the ground (WARNING: Graphic). Video from: @MikeDesmondWBFO
Two officers were suspended without pay shortly after the footage went viral, said Buffalo Police Department spokesman Mike DeGeorge. The man is currently in stable condition, according to reports.
The now-resigned officers remain employed by the department, but are no longer on Emergency Response Team, which was formed in 2016 for the purpose of managing mass protests.
“The City of Buffalo is aware of developments related to the work assignments of certain members of the Buffalo police force,” Mayor Byron Brown said in a statement. “At this time, we can confirm that contingency plans are in place to maintain police services and ensure public safety within our community. The Buffalo police continue to actively work with the New York State Police and other cooperating agencies.”
This story is developing. Check Breitbart News for updates.
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