Video: Cleveland Police Brutalize Student Protesters - Sign Petition for Students

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Detroit Cops Murder 7-Year Old Girl In Her Home

Detroit Police Say 7-Year-Old Shot in Home Search
Detroit police say 7-year-old girl fatally shot when officer's weapon fired during home search
AP, ABC News, May 16, 2010

Charles Jones, Aiyana's father, told the Detroit News the woman Godbee referred to was his mother and the child's grandmother.

"They came into my house with a flash grenade and a bullet," Jones said. "They say my mother resisted them, that she tried to take an officer's gun. My mother had never been in handcuffs in her life. They killed my baby, and I want someone to tell the truth."...

...Jones said he was trying not to be angry but wanted the story to be told.

"This was a wrongful death," he said.

DETROIT - A sleeping 7-year-old girl was shot and killed when an officer's gun went off while Detroit police were searching a duplex for a suspect in the slaying of a teenager, a police official said.

Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said at a news conference Sunday that Aiyana Jones was hit in the neck by a single bullet and died at a hospital. Police said the girl was sleeping on a couch when she was shot.

"This is any parent's worst nightmare. It also is any police officer's worst nightmare," Godbee said.

Godbee said officers with the department's Special Response Team set off a flash grenade as they entered the apartment with their guns drawn about 12:40 a.m. Sunday with a warrant to look for a suspect in the Friday slaying of a 17-year-old boy.

The lead officer encountered a 46-year-old woman immediately inside the front room of the house and "some level of physical contact" ensued during which the officer's gun went off, Godbee said. The officers had identified themselves as police, he said.

Charles Jones, Aiyana's father, told the Detroit News the woman Godbee referred to was his mother and the child's grandmother.

"They came into my house with a flash grenade and a bullet," Jones said. "They say my mother resisted them, that she tried to take an officer's gun. My mother had never been in handcuffs in her life. They killed my baby, and I want someone to tell the truth."

Godbee said the shooting was being investigated and all information was preliminary. The officer was put on paid administrative leave, he said. Police do not believe the gun was fired intentionally, he said.

"We cannot undo what occurred this morning," Godbee said. "All we can do is to pledge an open and full investigation and to support Aiyana's family in whatever way they may be willing to accept from us at this time."

Jones said he was trying not to be angry but wanted the story to be told.

"This was a wrongful death," he said.

The officers had a search warrant and were looking for a 34-year-old man suspected in the shooting death of 17-year-old Jarean Blake.

Blake, a student at Southeastern High School, was gunned down Friday by a liquor store in front of his girlfriend. Blake stumbled across the street, collapsed and died, police said.

Officers arrested the suspect during the search, Godbee said. Jones said the suspect wasn't in his apartment but one upstairs that officers raided at the same time.

Godbee would not comment on newspaper reports that neighbors told police there were children in the house and showed them toys in the front yard.

"This is a tragedy of unspeakable magnitude to Aiyana's parents, family and all those who loved her," Godbee said. "It is a tragedy we also feel very deeply throughout the ranks of the Detroit Police Department."

The Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality called the girl's death "the pain of pains" in a statement issued Sunday and questioned what protocols police used in the raid. The coalition said it would host a candlelight vigil Sunday evening at the home where she was shot.

****************
For more information:
Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality

Honduras police break up protests at site of talks

By BEN FOX, AP, Google News, Oct. 9, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Police fired tear gas and a water cannon Friday at protesters outside a hotel where talks on behalf of rival claimants to the Honduran presidency showed little sign of progress.

Six negotiators — three each for ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti — met for a second day after a diplomatic mission sponsored by the Organization of American States brought them together.

The talks were held in private. Pro-Zelaya protest leader Juan Barahona, one of the six negotiators, told The Associated Press on Friday that no progress had been made on the central issue — the return of Zelaya to office to serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in January.

Zelaya remained holed up with dozens of supporters in the Brazilian Embassy after sneaking back into Honduras.

Outside the Clarion Hotel, approximately 200 protesters demanding the Zelaya's reinstatement fled and then regrouped several times as police fired volleys of tear gas canisters from a line of dozens of officers in riot gear blocking the entrance of the hotel. Police finally chased off the demonstrators with a water cannon mounted on an armored vehicle.

There were no arrests and apparently no major injuries, though many people rubbed their eyes or cried from the acrid smoke.

"Ow, ow, ow, it's burning my eyes and my skin," 54-year-old protester Rosauro Garcia said, tears streaming down her cheeks from the gas and her shirt soaked with water from the cannon.

Garcia, a coordinator at a government office that provides assistance to rural communities, joined the protest during her lunch break to show her support for the return of Zelaya, who was forced into exile June 28 after he tried to hold a referendum on changing the constitution in defiance of a Supreme Court order ruling the ballot illegal.

"I came because it's not right what has happened to us," she said. "The president we elected was taken away."

Natalie Roque came equipped with a mask to cover her nose and mouth.

"The gases hurt but we've grown used to it after 104 days of violent repression," said the 26-year-old.

Roque, a researcher who says she was fired from her job at a government library for criticizing the interim government, insisted the demonstration was intended to be peaceful and there was no need for police to use force.

Governments throughout the world have called for the restoration of Zelaya in time to prepare for a Nov. 29 presidential election scheduled before he was ousted with the support of much of the ruling elite, including his own political party.

Honduras has experienced near daily protests since the military-backed coup. The U.S. and other nations have suspended foreign aid and imposed diplomatic isolation on the interim administration.

Micheletti has been unwilling to allow Zelaya's return and wants to go ahead with the election without him. The interim government and its supporters insist Zelaya was a corrupt and inept leader and they had a right to remove him.

They charge that Zelaya hoped to amend the constitution to repeal its one-term limit for presidents — a charge he has denied.

Sign Online Petition To Drop Charges On G-20 Protesters & Against Police Repression

Click Here To Sign Petition

To: Pittsburgh Mayor Ravenstahl, Pittsburgh City Council, Pittsburgh Police Chief, Allegheny County Council
CC: PA Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the PA Legislature, Federal Officials, Pittsburgh business leaders, members of the Pittsburgh and national media

I demand that the military occupation of Pittsburgh be disbanded immediately; all charges against the people arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and 25 especially the youth – including those involved in direct action confronting the G-20 summit – be dropped. Everyone detained must be accounted for and released. I support an independent worker-community-student investigation of the homeland security occupation and repression during the G-20 summit.

Sincerely,
(Your signature will be appended here based on the contact information you enter to the right)

Click Here To Sign Petition

Video: 14 yr old Girl Tasered in the Head by Police Chief in New Mexico

Why Are Cops Tasering Grandmothers, Pregnant Women and Kids?

By Scott Thill, AlterNet, Aug. 17, 2009

Technology is a double-edged sword, the cliche goes. It can save and even extend your life, but it can also kill you in new and unpredictable ways. In the several years since the Arizona-based Taser International has deployed its terminologically challenging Electronic Control Devices (ECDs), colloquially known as stun guns or simply tasers, what started out as a midrange law enforcement weapon has turned into a surreal nightmare that has gone viral from streets to screens. It's now to the point that only a hyperreal comedian like Stephen Colbert can make sense of it.

"Nation, our gun rights are always under attack from the bleeding hearts," he cracked in late July, "and not just the hearts bleeding from a gunshot wound. Thankfully, there's the taser. It's the perfect weapon for when you really want to shoot someone, but killing them just seems like overkill."

Of course, Colbert milked the footage of accidental and purposeful taser victims, the latter being media and law enforcement members who signed up for shock therapy and provided the world with no shortage of hilarious video. But his point was well-taken: Thanks to the taser's wildfire deployment, classification as non-lethal weaponry and pop-cultural appeal in films, television, comics and even cartoons, cops have nearly lost their minds using it on everyone from children, the elderly, and pregnant mothers to the mentally unstable and physically disabled.

Or have their lost their spines? After all, the police are public servants, and were even once referred to as peace officers, charged with resolving disputes, defusing danger and, when necessary, applying lethal force to keep the public safe. But lately, and thanks partially to the taser's alleged safety, they have been leaving peace behind in favor of brutalizing innocent civilians with accelerating lunacy. That kind of unarmed diplomacy takes real work, and involves much more than simply firing off electrified darts and wires. But rarely is there a day that goes by without another news entry doesn't stun, pardon the pun, the senses.

The latest case, as of this writing at least, involves a Syracuse mother who was pulled out her car during a routine traffic stop. She was summarily tasered, cuffed and arrested in front of her kids by an officer who left them behind, alone in their car, while he took her to the station and charged her for resisting arrest, driving five miles over the speeding limit, and disorderly conduct -- the diaphanous charge controversially leveled on Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. earlier this year.

There's plenty more where that came from. Did you hear the one about the pregnant woman who was tasered because she wouldn't sign her speeding ticket, or the pregnant woman who was tasered at a baptism party thrown by her father, a bible-study teacher who was charged with public intoxication in his own backyard and whose wife and son were also tasered? How about the officer who tasered a pregnant woman while inside the police department?

Or the cop who tasered a girl, no lie, in the brain, because he couldn't chase her down on foot? Or the one that shoved a taser up a man's ass in Idaho? Or those who tasered and pepper-sprayed an umbrella-wielding man in a Dollar Store bathroom, and after finding out that he was both mentally disabled and deaf still decided to charge him with resisting arrest, failure to obey a police officer and (of course) disorderly conduct, charges which the on-duty magistrate refused to accept? And don't forget the belligerent baseball fan, the 72-year old grandmother, the bride and groom tasered at their wedding, the bicyclists who were tased after cops tried to run them off the road. And what about that guy who burst into flames? What about the six-year-old who was tasered after threatening to cut his own leg with a glass? (That'll teach him!)

And those are the ones that lived. The black man tasered nine times in 14 minutes? Not so lucky.

"You're picking plane crashes," argued Steve Tuttle, vice-president of communications and one of Taser International's founding members, by phone to AlterNet. "We're not in the business of armchair quarterbacking, and we don't write the use-of-force policies. That's left up to individual agencies and the constitutional guidelines. When we see the controversies, we have to take a look at the totality of the circumstances."

To Tuttle's credit, he didn't shy away from the controversies surrounding his company, and even correctly characterized the aforementioned, egregious situations: They are indeed plane crashes, full of human and mechanical wreckage that are nearly impossible to turn away from. And with each new astounding report, they're bringing more heat onto the already embattled company, whose stock has plummeted nearly 80 percent since 2005. In 2008, Taser had to dish out $5 million in punitive damages after a product-liability suit found the company to blame for improperly informing police that repeated shocks could kill suspects such as Robert Heston, who died after police officers in California tasered him multiple times until he stopped moving. In addition, Taser has settled at least ten cases out of court with not distraught suspects but rather police officers, who were injured by tasers during training.

The disturbing developments caught the watchful eye of Amnesty International, which publicly worried that tasers were quickly becoming "tools of routine force."

"There is plenty of evidence that the use of conducted energy devices now frequently -- even routinely -- occurs in situations where there is no significant threat to law enforcement officers," Amnesty International spokesperson Wendy Gozan Brown explained to AlterNet. "Rather than being used as weapons of last resort, police employ tasers without considering the consequences. About 90 percent of the more than 350 people who have died in the U.S. after being shocked with such weapons were unarmed. And in dozens of cases, medical examiners have found CEDs to be a cause or contributory factor of death."

For his part, Tuttle admitted the danger, but he's still hurt by Amnesty International's approach. Or is that reproach?

"We've reached out to Amnesty International with olive branches and with iron gloves," he said. "We're not that dissimilar; we both want to protect human rights. They're selectively choosing the incidents."

In Taser's defense, its deployment has displaced other mid-range weaponry like pepper spray and batons -- "a caveman's tool," asserted Tuttle -- and even more old-fashioned, hands-on techniques like punching, kicking and chokeholds. And the use of tasers has decreased danger to both suspects and officers, according to some unlikely sources.

"I've seen the early adoption of these weapons as they bloomed across the country," explained Scott Greenwood, lead counsel and police misconduct litigator for the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) national chapter, "in large part because the traditional use-of-force continuum hasn't done a good job filling in the range between the club and the firearm. If you have very serious and very strict use-of-force policy, very good training and a very strong culture of reporting, then you see injuries to citizens radically decrease and you see a radical decrease of deadly force. That's from departments that do it the right way; it's the departments that do it the wrong way," that are causing the most problems, Greenwood clarified.

Greenwood's caveats aside, it is always those who misuse any product, from prescription medication to high-fructose corn syrup and beyond, that mess it up for everyone else going by the book, so to speak. The disastrous misapplication of tasers has no greater example than Iman Morales, the mentally disturbed man who was tasered on building ledge in New York, and fell immobilized to his death. Shortly after the controversial episode, NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly said such use of the taser might have violated policy and new training was needed. He also replaced the new commander of the Emergency Service Unit that responded to Morales' disturbance. But it was all too late for lieutenant Michael Pigott, the officer who ordered the tasering of Morales: He was stripped of his gun and badge, demoted and later shot himself in the head in a NYPD locker room after finding out that he might be a criminal suspect in Morales' death.

Tuttle conceded that death, and some applications of the taser, are unnecessary and improper.

"We specifically tell someone not to use a taser when a suspect is elevated," he said. "It could cause death. The anus is clearly a misuse of the device. We're not averse to discussing these things."

But it is clear from the increasing penetration of the taser into pop culture that use of the weapon within, and without, legally limited guidelines -- the gray area so beloved by lawyers, marketers, and law enforcement -- carries some kind of cachet. The shady corporation in charge of chasing down mutants, and perhaps destroying the world (depending on the season), in NBC's Heroes openly use tasers, glorifying the weapon for prime-time. Tasers have also shown up in comics, lately in DC Comics' otherwise cool Doom Patrol series. The latest lovers on ABC's hit show Lost first met when one tasered the other. Even the world's finest detective, the Dark Knight himself, took darts and wires to the chestplate for his girlfriend in Batman Begins.

"We've seen it used spectacularly," Tuttle explained. "I've seen hundreds of cartoons that have it. I saw three shows last night that had it, including a Disney kids' show and a Cops episode. It's out there in pop culture. That poor yahoo that said 'Don't tase me bro!' got us tremendous name recognition. We do provide them to prop houses, which give it to movies that use them. But sometimes the exposure isn't a pleasant experience, especially when it's a trademark violation."

To be sure: In April, Taser sued Linden Labs, creators of the online virtual world Second Life, for trademark infringement after the San Francisco-based company allowed virtual tasers for sale in the alternative world's marketplace. That's the kind of bizarre twist pop culture can create when it mashes reality and hyperreality too hard. You can see that process of glamorization and trademark in different form on Taser's own site: It currently alternates shots of founders and brothers Rick and Tom Smith in posing in taser-matching hero outfits with information on its new weapon the X3, which can now strike three people at once. And then there's Taser's keynote video, delivered during a training conference, which features kickass metal music and is emceed by an announcer who sounds as if he's on loan from the Academy Awards.

But glamorization doesn't come cheap, as Taser will find out the more its company name and controversial weaponry go viral. Those costs eventually come home to roost, and when they do, it is usually the glamorization that takes the bullet.

"I do believe that Taser International is partly to blame," argued Peter Bibring, staff attorney for ACLU's Southern California chapter. "Their marketing, particularly their initial marketing, overemphasized the safety of tasers. Taser International publishes the training used by most police departments. It deliberately cites medical research that it sponsors. If you give officers a device that is a substitute for a gun and tell them it can't hurt anyone, they're going to use it over and over again, in circumstances that don't call for use of force and on potentially vulnerable populations like pregnant women, the elderly and children."

"There's a learning curve when departments get tasers," Tuttle concluded. "Cops aren't perfect. They're human, but we expect them to be Robocop."

A fitting description, given the fantasy of power and technology that tasers and other weaponry imbue their carriers with. Compelled by an increasingly permissive militarism that has gone supernova since 9/11 and arrmed with state-of-the-art force technology, taser-happy cops are in danger of becoming cyborgs out of step with the humanity they're in charge of pacifying. Characterized as Heroes or elevated to the status of Robocop, without fully understanding the weapons that can save their lives, and kill those they're supposed to protect, they're walking a tightrope between thuggery and enforcement, and losing their balance with every bad episode.

"Tasers have been widely deployed without the benefit of rigorous, independent studies into their safety and potential health risks," Gozan Brown asserted, echoing Bibring's concern. "There's no government agency that has mandated testing," he added.

But Tuttle as the company he helped found are standing as firm as the "pinewood" taser victims turn into after being shocked. The danger for Taser is that same as it is for those suspects who won't bend: They could topple over, or be pushed by everything from lawsuits to newer and safer tools, and not get up again.

"We stand by our technology," he argued. "It's a litigious country, so you're going to have lawsuits. But we're in the business of selling tools to law enforcement, and their judgment will always come into question."

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

Skip Nadra and the Philadelphia Grand Jury

By Mumia Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio, Recorded 8/17/09

click here to listen to full audio column 3:20 min.

click here to listen to short version 2:48 min.

***************
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!

URGENT Need for Petition Signatures at: http://www.iacenter.org/mumiapetition/

Audio of most of Mumia's essays are at: http://www.prisonradio.org

http://mumiapodcast.libsyn.com/
Mumia's got a podcast! Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Essays - Subscribe at the website or on iTunes and get Mumia's radio commentaries online.

Mumia Abu-Jamal's new book -- JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE USA, featuring an introduction by Angela Y. Davis -- has been released! It is available from City Lights Books: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090

If you are planning to organize an event or would like to order in bulk, you can also receive a 45% discount on any bulk orders of 20 copies or more. The book retails for $16.95, for orders of 20 copies or more the discounted price would be $9.32 per book, plus shipping and handling. Prepayment would be required and books are nonreturnable. If you or your organization would like to place a bulk order, please contact Stacey Lewis at 415.362.1901 or stacey@citylights.com

Let's use the opportunity of the publication of this brilliant, moving, vintage Mumia book to build the momentum for his case, to raise the money we desperately need in these challenging economic times, to get the word out – to produce literature, flyers, posters, videos, DVD's; to send organizers out to help build new chapters and strengthen old ones, TO GET THE PEOPLE OUT IN THE STREETS … all the work that we must do in order to FREE MUMIA as he faces LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE OR EXECUTION!

Please make a contribution to help free Mumia. Donations to the grassroots work will go to both INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and the FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (NYC).

WWW.FREEMUMIA.COM

Please mail donations/ checks to:
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NY 10030
(CHECKS FOR BOTH ORGANIZATIONS PAYABLE TO: FMAJC/IFCO)

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215 476-8812
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Stand in Solidarity with Prof. Gates! Say NO to Racism!

Stop Racial Profiling and Police Brutality!

Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Was Right!

The Cambridge Cops Must Apologize!

Youth Need Jobs & Schools - Not Jails!

Demand a Justice Department Investigation
of Racial Profiling Across the US

Sign the Online Petition here. Let President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Massachusetts Governor Patrick, Cambridge Mayor Simmons, the Cambridge City Council, Cambridge Police Commissioner Haas, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders and members of the media know you stand against racism with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and you want the Obama administration to launch a national investigation into racial profiling and police brutality NOW!
http://www.bailoutpeople.org/gatespetition.shtml

The arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by a Cambridge police officer after showing two forms of identification after he, along with a Black limo driver, had unjammed the lock to the front door of Gates' own house in a predominantly white, upscale neighborhood known as "Harvard Square" has brought the struggle against racism to the front pages of newspapers throughout the US and around the world.

The Cambridge Police Department and their racist allies have worked overtime to slander and vilify Prof. Gates. But his only crime was in fact to resist the racist arrogance of the Cambridge Police and not acquiesce to their racist and unjust treatment of him. The torrent of racist vitriol targeting Prof. Gates as well as the absolute racist arrogance displayed by the Cambridge Police Department in demanding that Pres. Obama and Gov. Patrick apologize for expressing support for Prof. Gates, cannot go unanswered! It is time for all poor and working people, and particularly whites, to come out against these racist attacks and stand foursquare in 100% solidarity with Professor Gates and against racial profiling and police brutality.

Cambridge, Harvard University and Boston are seen around the world as bastions of liberalism, hotbeds of progressive ideas and prestigious places from which cutting-edge research emanates. But the racial profiling and arrest of Prof. Gates have re-raised the question of how much has changed since the 1970s when, in the wake of court-ordered busing for desegregation, white racist mobs were stoning buses carrying Black school children and attacking Black people on the streets and in their homes.

Gates was Right! The Cambridge Police Department was Wrong!

Racial profiling is another expression of institutionalized racism. In the U.S., racial profiling and police brutality have become an unfortunate reality of life for people of color, especially youth. It doesn't matter whether it occurs in the inner city, a small town, or an upper-middle class suburb.

In a 2004 report entitled "Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security and Human Rights in the United States," Amnesty International documented that in a year-long investigation, an estimated 32 million people had been racially profiled--the vast majority of them from nationally oppressed groups. One can only imagine how much these numbers have increased over the last five years, not only for those born in the U.S. but also for immigrants. Since 9/11 there has been a corresponding increase in racial profiling targeting the Arab and Muslim communities.

The police have been, by far, the most feared perpetrators of racial profiling, and understandably so. Police harassment and brutality is an epidemic. According to a 2008 report by the Washington, D.C. based Campaign for Youth Justice entitled ”Critical Condition: African American Youth in the Justice System” African American youth make up 30 percent of youth arrested while they represent only 17 percent of the overall youth population. Additionally, African American youth are 62 percent of the total number of youth prosecuted in the adult criminal system and are nine times more likely than white youth to receive an adult prison sentence.

One only needs to remember how the Somerville 5 (5 Black youth from Somerville who were arrested on racist frame up charges by the Medford Police) or the Jena 6 were treated. Not to mention the racism that followed the devastation of the 9th Ward in New Orleans as a result of hurricane Katrina.

As the economic crisis deepens the ruling class will use all means at its disposal to foster artificial divisions between white workers and Black, Latina/o, and immigrant workers. It is our responsibility to build a movement based on anti-racist, class-wide solidarity--as workers of all nationalities are losing their jobs, homes, health care and pensions in rapid numbers; and as the economic crisis becomes even more extreme.

Text of online petition:

To: President Obama, Attorney General Holder, Massachusetts Governor Patrick, Cambridge Mayor Simmons, the Cambridge City Council, Cambridge Police Commissioner Haas, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Congressional Leaders and members of the media

I deplore the racist treatment of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by the Cambridge police on July 16. Professor Gates was arrested simply for being in his own home and insisting on his right to have the name and badge number of the arresting officer, rather than standing silent in the face of blatant racist injustice inside his own home. I demand an immediate apology to Professor Gates from the Cambridge Police.

The Gates affair throws a bright national spotlight on the reality of racial profiling and police brutality in the United States, as Professor Gates himself said at the time of the incident. President Obama acknowledged this in his comments on it at his national press conference.

I call on all justice-loving people to stand in 100% solidarity with Professor Gates and against racial profiling and police brutality, and to stand up against the barrage of right-wing hate spewing forth from law enforcement and police unions and fanned by news media outlets and commentators, having the arrogance to demand that President Obama and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick apologize for supporting Prof. Gates and speaking the truth.

I further demand that the Justice Department take up an immediate robust investigation of racial profiling and police brutality nationwide, and bring perpetrating police officers to justice and withdraw funds from police departments which practice racial profiling and police brutality. What happened to Professor Gates is not an individual incident. Racial profiling and police brutality must be dealt with in a serious and systematic way.

Sincerely,
(your signature appended here).

Bail Out The People Movement
Boston
617-522-6626
bopmboston@gmail.com
http://bopm-boston.blogspot.com

National Office
212-633-6646
bailoutpeople@safewebmail.com
http://www.BailOutPeople.org

Boise ombudsman says police officer used excessive force in an arrest this year

BY KATY MOELLER, IdahoStatesman.com, July 22, 2009

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the Taser incident (warning: explicit language)

Click here to read Pierce Murphy's 43-page report on the incident

A report issued Wednesday by Boise Community Ombudsman Pierce Murphy found that a Boise police officer who used a Taser on a suspect's buttocks violated the police department's use-of-force policy.

Boise Police Chief Michael Masterson, in a release, said he agreed with Murphy's conclusion that serious policy violations were made by that officer and another officer who erased a recording of an interview with the suspect at the jail. The two officers, whose names were not released, were among eight officers who responded to the incident in early 2009.

The Boise Police Department did an internal investigation, and both employees were disciplined; details on the discipline were not released. It is considered an internal personnel matter, said police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower.

The use-of-force violation occurred during an arrest at a Boise home; the address and the names of the occupants have not been released. Police were called to the house after a report of a fight. While on their way, they learned that a man inside the woman's residence had just been released from jail. They were also told a 3-year-old boy in the home, according to details provided in Murphy's report.

Upon arrival, the officers heard the sounds of a struggle and voices coming from inside. The officers yelled for someone to open the door, and were greeted with a profane comment by a man in the residence. The officers had to kick and push the door open; the man inside was pushing against the door for more than 80 seconds. Once they gained entry, the officers said the suspect did not comply with their demands to get on the ground and stop resisting.

The suspect said that he was hit three times with a Taser after he was already handcuffed and face-down on the floor. Murphy's investigation found evidence that the suspect was hit twice with the Taser — once in the back before he was handcuffed and once in the buttocks after he was cuffed.

Murphy said the officer who used the Taser -— described as Officer #3 in the report — also coarsely threatened to use the Taser in the man's anus and genitals. Murphy's report says that use of Taser on a man's buttock's does not violate policy in and of itself; the question is whether it was "reasonable and necessary."

Upon Murphy’s request, Idaho State Police investigated the incident to determine if there was any criminal wrong-doing on the part of Officer #3. Idaho State Police forwarded a report to the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, which did not pursue criminal charges against the officer.

The exchange between Officer #3 and the suspect during the incident was captured on a police officer's recorder. Murphy transcribed some of it in his report:

Officer #3: Do you feel this?

Complainant: Yes, sir.

Officer #3: Do you feel that? That’s my -

Complainant: Okay

Officer #3: -Taser up your ass.

Complainant: Okay

Officer #3: So don’t move.

Complainant: I’m trying not to. I can’t breathe.

"This exchange, especially the complainant’s response, strongly suggests that, at that moment anyway, the Taser was pressed between the Complainant’s buttocks and near his anal area," Murphy wrote in his report on the incident.

Two circular burn marks 1 to 2 centimeters in size were found on the suspect's buttocks, Murphy said.

Officer #3 also threatened to use the Taser on the suspect's genitalia.

Here's more of the transcribed recording of the exchange between Officer #3 and the suspect:

Officer #3: Now do you feel this in your balls?

Complainant: I do, sir. I’m not going to move. I’m not gonna move.

Officer #3 Now I’m gonna tase your balls if you move again.

A minute later, this exchange occurred:

Officer #3: Okay, I’m gonna take this Taser out of your asshole now. Are you going to fight with me?

Complainant: No, not at all, sir.

In the Boise police press release Wednesday, police department leaders said Officer #3's actions and language elevates the seriousness of the violation to conduct unbecoming an officer.

Department officials said they also agreed with the ombudsman's findings that another officer, described as Officer #10, acted improperly when he erased the audio recording of a jail interview with the suspect.

Officer #3 has been with the Boise Police Department five years, while Officer #10 is an 18-year veteran of the department.

At the end of his report, Murphy offered some policy and training recommendations to the Boise Police Department.

— Use-of-force investigation policy review. Establish specific standards and procedures needed for those tasked with investigating reportable uses of force by Boise police officers. "It is important that such acts be investigated and documented using consistent, best practices," he said.

— Training regarding positional asphyxia. During the arrest in question, the suspect was placed face-down on the ground and handcuffed with his hands behind his back and had the weight of three officers on his body. "None of the officers seemed to be aware of the possible danger posed by positional asphyxia," Murphy said.

kmoeller@idahostatesman.com

Citing withheld evidence, supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal call for civil rights investigation

By Hans Bennett, San Francisco Bay View, June 16, 2009

On April 6, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal from death-row journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of white Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela and numerous others. Citing the Supreme Court denial and several instances of withheld evidence, Abu-Jamal’s international support network is now calling for a federal civil rights investigation into Abu-Jamal’s case.

The facts of the Abu-Jamal/Faulkner case are highly contested, but all sides agree on certain key points: Abu-Jamal was moonlighting as a taxi-driver on Dec. 9, 1981, when, shortly before 4 a.m., he saw his brother, William “Billy” Cook, in an altercation with Officer Faulkner after Faulkner had pulled over Cook’s car at the corner of 13th and Locust streets, downtown Philadelphia. Abu-Jamal approached the scene.

Minutes later when police arrived, Faulkner had been shot dead, and Abu-Jamal had been shot in the chest. The bullet removed from Faulkner, reportedly a .38, was officially too damaged to match it to the legally registered .38 caliber gun that Abu-Jamal says he carried as a taxi driver, after he was robbed several times on the job. Further, Amnesty International has criticized the official “failure of the police to test Abu-Jamal’s gun, hands, and clothing” for gunshot residue as “deeply troubling.”

Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence, and today still fights the conviction from his death-row cell in Waynesburg, Penn., where he also records weekly radio commentaries and has now written six books.

Recently, Abu-Jamal had petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the U.S. Third Circuit Court ruling of March 27, 2008, which rejected his bid, based on three issues, for a new guilt-phase trial. One issue was that of racially discriminatory jury selection, based on the 1986 case Batson v. Kentucky, on which the three-judge panel split 2-1, with Judge Thomas Ambro dissenting.

Ambro argued that prosecutor Joseph McGill’s use of 10 out of his 15 peremptory strikes to remove otherwise acceptable African-American jurors was itself enough evidence of racial discrimination to grant Abu-Jamal a preliminary hearing that could have led to a new trial. In denying Abu-Jamal this preliminary hearing, Ambro argued that the court was creating new rules that were being exclusively applied to Abu-Jamal’s case. The denial “goes against the grain of our prior actions … I see no reason why we should not afford Abu-Jamal the courtesy of our precedents,” wrote Ambro.

In his new essay titled “The Mumia Exception,” author J. Patrick O’Connor argues that the Third Circuit Court’s rejection of the Batson claim and of the other two issues presented is only the latest example of the courts’ longstanding practice of altering existing precedent to deny Abu-Jamal legal relief. O’Connor cites many other problems, including the 2001 affidavit by a former court stenographer, who says that on the eve of Abu-Jamal’s trial, she overheard Judge Albert Sabo say to someone at the courthouse that he was going to “help” the prosecution “fry the nigger,” referring to Abu-Jamal. Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe rejected this affidavit on grounds that even if Sabo had made the comment, it was irrelevant as long as his “rulings were legally correct.”

The phrase “Mumia exception” was first coined by Linn Washington Jr., a Philadelphia Tribune columnist and professor of journalism at Temple University, who has covered this story since the day of Abu-Jamal’s 1981 arrest. Washington criticizes the Third Circuit’s ruling against Abu-Jamal’s claim that Judge Sabo had treated him unfairly at the 1995-97 Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) hearings, which was another issue the Circuit Court had considered. Citing “the mound of legal violations in this case,” Washington says “the continuing refusal of U.S. courts to equally apply the law in the Abu-Jamal case constitutes a stain on America’s image internationally.”

Launched campaign cites withheld evidence

The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal are responding to the March 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling by launching a campaign calling for a federal civil rights investigation into Abu-Jamal’s case. The campaign’s supporters include the Riverside Church’s Prison Ministry, actress Ruby Dee, professor Cornel West and U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel, who is chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

In 2004, the NAACP passed a resolution supporting a new trial for Abu-Jamal, and campaign supporters will be gathering to publicize the civil rights campaign at the upcoming NAACP National Convention in New York City July 11-16 and to pressure the NAACP to honor their earlier resolutions by actively supporting the current campaign seeking an investigation. Supporters will then be in Washington, D.C., on July 22 to lobby their elected officials and, in mid-September, they’ll return to Washington, D.C., for a major press conference.

Thousands of signatures have been collected for a public letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, which reads: “Inasmuch as there is no other court to which Abu-Jamal can appeal for justice, we turn to you for remedy of a 27-year history of gross violations of U.S. constitutional law and international standards of justice.” The letter cites Holder’s recent investigation into the case of former Sen. Ted Stevens, which led to all charges against him being dropped: “You were specifically outraged by the fact that the prosecution withheld information critical to the defense’s argument for acquittal, a violation clearly committed by the prosecution in Abu-Jamal’s case. Mumia Abu-Jamal, though not a U.S. Senator of great wealth and power, is a Black man revered around the world for his courage, clarity and commitment and deserves no less than Senator Stevens.”

Supporters will be gathering to publicize the campaign for a federal civil rights investigation into Abu-Jamal’s case at the upcoming NAACP National Convention in New York City July 11-16.

Several campaigns seeking a civil rights investigation into the Abu-Jamal case have been launched since 1995, at which time the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was one of many groups that publicly supported an investigation. In a 1995 letter written independently of the CBC, Reps. Chaka Fattah, Ron Dellums, Cynthia McKinney, Maxine Waters and John Conyers – now chairman of the House Judiciary Committee – stated, “There is ample evidence that Mr. Abu-Jamal’s constitutional rights were violated, that he did not receive a fair trial, and that he is, in fact, innocent.”

Assistant Attorney General Andrew Fois responded to the CBC’s request and, in a September 1995 rejection letter written to Congressman Ron Dellums, Fois conceded that even though there is a five-year statute of limitations for a civil rights investigation, the statute does not apply if “there is significant evidence of an ongoing conspiracy.”

One of the 2009 campaign’s organizers is Dr. Suzanne Ross, a spokesperson for the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition of New York City.

Citing Andrew Fois’ letter, Ross argues that the “continued denial of justice to Mumia in the federal courts, as documented by dissenting Judge Thomas Ambro,” is evidence of an “ongoing conspiracy” and thus merits an investigation. “Throughout the history of this case, we were always told ‘Wait until we get to the federal courts. They will surely overturn the racism and gross misconduct of Judge Sabo,’ but we never got even a preliminary hearing on the issue considered most winnable: racial bias in jury selection, the so called Batson issue.”

Ross also criticizes the Third Circuit’s denial of Abu-Jamal’s claim that Judge Sabo was unfair at the 1995-97 PCRA hearings and considers this denial to be further evidence of an “ongoing conspiracy.” Ross argues that the courts’ continued affirmation of Sabo’s rulings during the PCRA hearings and Sabo’s ultimate ruling that nothing presented at the PCRA hearings was significant enough to merit a new trial serves to legitimize numerous injustices throughout Abu-Jamal’s case.

Specifically referring to the issue of withheld evidence that was central to the case of former Sen. Ted Stevens, organizer Suzanne Ross identifies five key instances in Abu-Jamal’s case where “evidence was withheld that could have led to Mumia’s acquittal.” The DA’s office withheld two items from Abu-Jamal’s defense: the actual location of the driver’s license application found in Officer Faulkner’s pocket and Pedro Polakoff’s crime scene photos. Then, at the request of prosecutor McGill, Judge Sabo ruled to block three items from the jury: prosecution eyewitness Robert Chobert’s probation status and criminal history; testimony from defense eyewitness Veronica Jones about police attempts to solicit false testimony; and testimony from Police Officer Gary Waskshul.

DA suppresses evidence about Kenneth Freeman

In their recent books, Michael Schiffmann (”Race Against Death: The Struggle for the Life and Freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” 2006), and J. Patrick O’Connor (”The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” 2008) argue that the actual shooter of Officer Faulkner was a man named Kenneth Freeman. Schiffmann and O’Connor argue that Freeman was an occupant of Billy Cook’s car who shot Faulkner in response to Faulkner having shot Abu-Jamal first, and then fled the scene before police arrived.

Central to Schiffmann and O’Connor’s argument was the presence of a driver’s license application for one Arnold Howard, which was found in the front pocket of Officer Faulkner’s shirt. Abu-Jamal’s defense would not learn about this until 13 years later, because the police and DA’s office had failed to notify them about the application’s crucial location. Journalist Linn Washington argues that this failure was “a critical and deliberate omission” and “a major violation of fair trial rights and procedures. If the appeals process had any semblance of fairness, this misconduct alone should have won a new trial for Abu-Jamal.”

More importantly, Washington says, “This evidence provides strong proof of a third person at the scene along with Faulkner and Billy Cook. The prosecution case against Abu-Jamal rests on the assertion that Faulkner encountered a lone Cook minutes before Abu-Jamal’s arrival on the scene, but Faulkner got that application from somebody other than Cook, who had his own license.”

At the 1995 PCRA hearing, Arnold Howard testified that he had loaned his temporary, non-photo license to Kenneth Freeman, who was Billy Cook’s business partner and close friend. Further, Howard stated that police came to his house early in the morning on Dec. 9, 1981, and brought him to the police station for questioning because he was suspected of being “the person who had run away” from the scene, but he was released after producing a 4 a.m. receipt from a drugstore across town – which provided an alibi – and telling them that he had loaned the application to Freeman, who Howard reports was also at the police station that morning.

Also pointing to Freeman’s presence in the car with Cook, O’Connor and Schiffmann cite prosecution witness Cynthia White’s testimony at Cook’s separate trial for charges of assaulting Faulkner, where White describes both a “driver” and a “passenger” in Cook’s VW. Also notable, investigative journalist Dave Lindorff’s book (”Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” 2003) features an interview with Cook’s lawyer, Daniel Alva, in which Alva says that Cook had confided to him within days of the shooting that Freeman had been with him that morning.

Linn Washington argues that “this third person at the crime scene is consistent with eyewitness accounts of the shooter fleeing the scene. Remember that accounts from both prosecution and defense witnesses confirm the existence of a fleeing shooter. Abu-Jamal was arrested at the scene, critically wounded. He did not run away and return in a matter of seconds.” Eyewitnesses Robert Chobert, Dessie Hightower, Veronica Jones, Deborah Kordansky, William Singletary and Marcus Cannon all reported, at various times, that they saw one or more men run away from the scene.

O’Connor writes that “some of the eyewitnesses said this man had an Afro and wore a green army jacket. Freeman did have an Afro and he perpetually wore a green army jacket. Freeman was tall and burly, weighing about 225 pounds at the time.” Then there’s eyewitness Robert Harkins, whom prosecutor McGill did not call as a witness. O’Connor postulates that the prosecutor made that decision because Harkins’ account of a struggle between Faulkner and the shooter that caused Faulkner to fall on his hands and knees before Faulkner was shot “demolished the version of the shooting that the state’s other witnesses rendered at trial.” O’Connor writes further that “Harkins described the shooter as a little taller and heavier than the 6-foot, 200-pound Faulkner,” which excludes the 6-foot-1-inch, 170-pound Abu-Jamal.

Linn Washington’s 2001 affidavit states that he knew Freeman to be a “close friend of Cook’s” and that “Cook and Freeman were constantly together.” Washington first met Freeman when Freeman reported his experience of police brutality to the Philadelphia Tribune, where Washington worked. Washington says today that “Kenny did not harbor any illusions about police being unquestioned heroes due to his experiences with being beaten a few times by police and police incessantly harassing him for his street vending.”

Regarding the police harassment and intimidation of Freeman, which continued after the arrest of Abu-Jamal, Washington adds: “It is significant to note that the night after the Faulkner shooting, the newsstand that Freeman built and operated at 16th and Chestnut Streets in Center City burned to the ground. In news media accounts of this arson, police sources openly boasted to reporters that the arsonist was probably a police officer. Witnesses claimed to see officers fleeing the scene right before the fire was noticed. Needless to say, that arson resulted in no arrests.”

Dave Lindorff argues that the police clearly “had their eye on Freeman,” because “only two months after Faulkner’s shooting, Freeman was arrested in his home, where he was found hiding in his attic armed with a .22 caliber pistol, explosives and a supply of ammunition. At that time, he was not charged with anything.” O’Connor and Schiffmann argue that police intimidation ultimately escalated to the point where police themselves murdered Freeman.

The morning of May 14, 1985, Freeman’s body was found: naked, bound and with a drug needle in his arm. His cause of death was officially declared a “heart attack.” The date of Freeman’s death is significant because the night before his body was found, the police had orchestrated a military-style siege on the MOVE organization’s West Philadelphia home. Police had fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition in 90 minutes and used a State Police helicopter to drop a C-4 bomb – illegally supplied by the FBI – on MOVE’s roof, which started a fire that destroyed the entire city block. The MOVE Commission later documented that police had shot at MOVE family members when they tried to escape the fire: In all, six adults and five children were killed.

As a local journalist, Abu-Jamal had criticized the city government’s conflicts with MOVE and, after his 1981 arrest, MOVE began to publicly support him. Through this mutual advocacy, which continues today, Abu-Jamal and MOVE’s contentious relationship with the Philadelphia authorities have always been closely linked. Seen in this context, Schiffmann argues that “if Freeman was indeed killed by cops, the killing probably was part of a general vendetta of the Philadelphia cops against their ‘enemies’ and the cops killed him because they knew or suspected he had something to do with the killing of Faulkner.” O’Connor concurs, arguing that “the timing and modus operandi of the abduction and killing alone suggest an extreme act of police vengeance.”

DA suppresses Pedro Polakoff’s crime scene photos

On Dec. 6, 2008, several hundred protesters gathered outside the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, where Pam Africa, coordinator of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, spoke about the newly discovered crime scene photos taken by press photographer Pedro Polakoff. Africa cited Polakoff’s statements today that he approached the DA’s office with the photos in 1981, 1982 and 1995 but that the DA had completely ignored him.

Polakoff states that because he had believed Abu-Jamal was guilty, he had no interest in approaching the defense, and never did. Consequently, neither the 1982 jury nor the defense ever saw Polakoff’s photos. “The DA deliberately kept evidence out,” declared Africa. “Someone should be arrested for withholding evidence in a murder trial.”

Advocacy groups called Educators for Mumia and Journalists for Mumia explain in their fact sheet, “21 FAQs,” that Polakoff’s photos were first discovered by German author Michael Schiffmann in May 2006 and published that fall in his book, “Race Against Death.” One of Polakoff’s photos was first published in the U.S. by the San Francisco Bay View newspaper on Oct. 24, 2007.

Reuters followed with a Dec. 4, 2007, article, after which the photos made their television debut on NBC’s Dec. 6, 2007 Today Show. They have since been spotlighted by National Public Radio, Indymedia.org, Counterpunch, The Philadelphia Weekly and the new British documentary “In Prison My Whole Life,” which features an interview with Polakoff.

Since May, 2007, www.Abu-Jamal-News.com has displayed four of Polakoff’s photos, making the following points:

Photo 1: Mishandling the Guns – Officer James Forbes holds both Abu-Jamal’s and Faulkner’s guns in his bare hand and touches the metal parts. This contradicts his later court testimony that he had preserved the ballistics evidence by not touching the metal parts.

Photos 2 and 3: The Moving Hat – Faulkner’s hat is moved from the top of Billy Cook’s VW and placed on the sidewalk for the official police photo.

Photo 4: The Missing Taxi – Prosecution witness Robert Chobert testified that he was parked directly behind Faulkner’s car, but the space is empty in the photo.

The Missing Divots – In all of Polakoff’s photos of the sidewalk where Faulkner was found, there are no large bullet divots, or destroyed chunks of cement, which should be visible in the pavement if the prosecution scenario was accurate. According to that account, Abu-Jamal shot down at Faulkner – and allegedly missed several times – while Faulkner was on his back. Also, citing the official police photo, Michael Schiffmann writes: “It is thus no question any more whether the scenario presented by the prosecution at Abu-Jamal’s trial is true, because it is physically impossible.”

Pedro P. Polakoff was a Philadelphia freelance photographer who reports having arrived at the crime scene about 12 minutes after the shooting was first reported on police radio and at least 10 minutes before the arrival of the Mobile Crime Detection Unit that handles crime scene forensics and photographs. In Schiffmann’s interview with him, Polakoff recounted that “all the officers present expressed the firm conviction that Abu-Jamal had been the passenger in Billy Cook’s VW and had fired and killed Faulkner by a single shot fired from the passenger seat of the car.” Polakoff bases this on police statements made to him directly and from his having overheard their conversations.

Polakoff states that this early police opinion was apparently the result of their interviews of three other witnesses who were still present at the crime scene: a parking lot attendant, a drug-addicted woman and another woman. None of those eyewitnesses, however, have appeared in any report presented to the courts by the police or the prosecution.

It is undisputed that Abu-Jamal approached from across the street and was not the passenger in Billy Cook’s car. Schiffmann argues that Polakoff’s personal account strengthens the argument that the actual shooter was Billy Cook’s passenger Kenneth Freeman, who, Schiffmann postulates, fled the scene before police arrived.

Robert Chobert’s legal status withheld from jury

At prosecutor Joseph McGill’s request, Judge Albert Sabo blocked Abu-Jamal’s defense from telling the 1982 jury that key prosecution eyewitness, taxi driver Robert Chobert, was on probation for throwing a molotov cocktail into a school yard, for pay. Sabo justified this by ruling that Chobert’s offense was not crimen falsi, i.e., a crime of deception. Consequently, the jury never heard about this, nor that on the night of Abu-Jamal’s arrest, Chobert had been illegally driving on a suspended license (revoked for a DWI). This probation violation could have given him up to 30 years in prison, so he was extremely vulnerable to pressure from the police. Notably, at the later 1995 PCRA hearing, Chobert testified that his probation had never been revoked, even though he continued to drive his taxi illegally through 1995.

At the 1982 trial, Chobert testified that he was in his taxi, which he had parked directly behind Faulkner’s police car, and was writing in his log book when he heard the first gunshot and looked up. Chobert alleged that while he did not see a gun in Abu-Jamal’s hand, nor a muzzle flash, he did see Abu-Jamal standing over Faulkner, saw Abu-Jamal’s hand “jerk back” several times, and heard shots after each “jerk.” After the shooting, Chobert stated that he got out and approached the scene.

Damaging Chobert’s credibility, however, is evidence suggesting that Chobert may have lied about his location at the time of Faulkner’s death. As noted earlier, the newly discovered Polakoff crime scene photos show that the space where Chobert testified to being parked directly behind Officer Faulkner’s car was actually empty.

Yet even more evidence suggests he lied about his location. While prosecution eyewitness Cynthia White is the only witness to testify seeing Chobert’s taxi parked behind Faulkner’s police car, no official eyewitness reported seeing White at the scene. Furthermore, Chobert’s taxi is missing both from White’s first sketch of the crime scene given to police (Defense Exhibit D-12) and from a later one (Prosecution Exhibit C-35). In a 2001 affidavit, private investigator George Michael Newman says that in a 1995 interview, Chobert told Newman that Chobert was actually parked around the corner, on 13th Street, north of Locust Street, and did not even see the shooting.

Amnesty International documents that both Chobert and White “altered their descriptions of what they saw, in ways that supported the prosecution’s version of events.” Chobert first told police that the shooter simply “ran away,” but after he had identified Abu-Jamal at the scene, he said the shooter had run away 30 to 35 “steps” before he was caught. At trial, Chobert changed this distance to 10 “feet,” which was closer to the official police account that Abu-Jamal was found just a few feet away from Officer Faulkner.

Nevertheless, Chobert did stick to a few statements in his trial testimony that contradicted the prosecution’s scenario. For example, Chobert declared that he did not see the apparently unrelated Ford car that, according to official reports, was parked in front of Billy Cook’s VW. Chobert also claimed that the altercation happened behind Cook’s VW (it officially happened in front of Cook’s VW), that Chobert did not see Abu-Jamal get shot or see Officer Faulkner fire his gun, and that the shooter was “heavyset” – estimating 200-225 pounds. Abu-Jamal weighed 170 pounds.

In his 2003 book, “Killing Time,” Dave Lindorff wrote about two other problems with Chobert’s account. While being so legally vulnerable, why would Chobert have parked directly behind a police car? Why would he have left his car and approached the scene if in fact the shooter were still there? Lindorff suggests that “at the time of the incident, Chobert might not have thought that the man slumped on the curb was the shooter,” because “in his initial Dec. 9 statement to police investigators, Chobert had said that he saw ‘another man’ who ‘ran away’ … He claimed in his statement that police stopped that man, but that he didn’t see him later.” Therefore, “if Chobert did think he saw the shooter run away, it might well explain why he would have felt safe walking up to the scene of the shooting as he said he did, before the arrival of police.”

The attempts to silence Veronica Jones

Veronica Jones was working as a prostitute at the crime scene on Dec. 9, 1981. She first told police on Dec. 15, 1981, that she had seen two men “jogging” away from the scene before police arrived. As a defense witness at the 1982 trial, Jones denied having made that statement; however, later in her testimony she started to describe a pre-trial visit from police: “They were getting on me telling me I was in the area and I seen Mumia, you know, do it. They were trying to get me to say something that the other girl [Cynthia White] said. I couldn’t do that.” Jones then explicitly testified that police had offered to let her and White “work the area if we tell them” what they wanted to hear regarding Abu-Jamal’s guilt.

At this point, prosecutor McGill interrupted Jones and moved to block her account, calling her testimony “absolutely irrelevant.” Judge Sabo agreed to block the line of questioning and strike the testimony and then ordered the jury to disregard Jones’ statement.

The DA and Sabo’s efforts to silence Jones continued through to the later PCRA hearings that started in 1995. Having been unable to locate Jones earlier, the defense found Jones in 1996, and, over the DA’s protests, obtained permission from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to extend the PCRA hearings for Jones’ testimony. Sabo vehemently resisted – arguing that there was not sufficient proof of her unavailability in 1995. However, in 1995, Sabo had refused to order disclosure of Jones’ home address to the defense team.

Over Sabo’s objections, the defense returned to the state Supreme Court, which ordered Sabo to conduct a full evidentiary hearing. Sabo’s attempts to silence Jones continued as she took the stand. He immediately threatened her with five-10 years imprisonment if she testified to having perjured herself in 1982. In defiance, Jones persisted with her testimony that she had in fact lied in 1982, when she had denied her original account to police that she had seen two men “leave the scene.”

Jones testified that she had changed her version of events after being visited by two detectives in prison, where she was being held on charges of robbery and assault. Urging her to both finger Abu-Jamal as the shooter and to retract her statement about seeing two men “run away,” the detectives stressed that she faced up to 10 years in prison and the loss of her children if convicted. Jones testified in 1996 that in 1982, afraid of losing her children, she had decided to meet the police halfway: She did not actually finger Abu-Jamal, but she did lie about not seeing two men running from the scene. Accordingly, following the 1982 trial, Jones only received probation and was never imprisoned for the charges against her.

During the 1996 cross-examination, the DA announced that there was an outstanding arrest warrant for Jones on charges of writing a bad check and that she would be arrested after concluding her testimony. With tears pouring down her face, Jones declared: “This is not going to change my testimony!” Despite objections from the defense, Sabo allowed New Jersey police to handcuff and arrest Jones in the courtroom.

While the DA attempted to use this arrest to discredit Jones, her determination in the face of intimidation may, arguably, have made her testimony more credible. Outraged by Jones’ treatment, even the Philadelphia Daily News, certainly no fan of Abu-Jamal, reported: “Such heavy-handed tactics can only confirm suspicions that the court is incapable of giving Abu-Jamal a fair hearing. Sabo has long since abandoned any pretense of fairness.”

Jones’ account was given further credibility a year later. At the 1997 PCRA hearing, former prostitute Pamela Jenkins testified that police had tried pressuring her to falsely testify that she saw Abu-Jamal shoot Faulkner. In addition, Jenkins testified that in late 1981, Cynthia White – whom Jenkins knew as a fellow police informant – told Jenkins that she was also being pressured to testify against Abu-Jamal and that she was afraid for her life.

As part of a 1995 federal probe of Philadelphia police corruption, Officers Thomas F. Ryan and John D. Baird were convicted of paying Jenkins to falsely testify that she had bought drugs from a Temple University student. Jenkins’ 1995 testimony in this probe helped to convict Ryan, Baird and other officers and also to dismiss several dozen drug convictions. At the 1997 PCRA hearing, Jenkins testified that this same Thomas F. Ryan was one of the officers who attempted to have her lie about Abu-Jamal.

More recently, a 2002 affidavit by former prostitute Yvette Williams described police coercion of Cynthia White. The affidavit reads: “I was in jail with Cynthia White in December of 1981 after Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed. Cynthia White told me the police were making her lie and say she saw Mr. Jamal shoot Officer Faulkner when she really did not see who did it … Whenever she talked about testifying against Mumia Abu-Jamal, and how the police were making her lie, she was nervous and very excited and I could tell how scared she was from the way she was talking and crying.”

Explaining why she is just now coming out with her affidavit, Williams says: “I feel like I’ve almost had a nervous breakdown over keeping quiet about this all these years. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid. I was afraid of the police. They’re dangerous.” Williams’ affidavit was rejected by Philadelphia Judge Pamela Dembe in 2005, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in February 2008 and, in October 2008, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Further supporting the contention that police had made a deal with White, author J. Patrick O’Connor writes: “Prior to her becoming a prosecution witness in Abu-Jamal’s case, White had been arrested 38 times for prostitution … After she gave her third statement to the police, on December 17, 1981, she would not be arrested for prostitution in Philadelphia ever again even though she admitted at Billy Cook’s trial that she continued to be ‘actively working.’”

Amnesty International reports that later, in 1987, White was facing charges of armed robbery, aggravated assault and possession of illegal weapons. A judge granted White the right to sign her own bail and she was released after a special request was made by Philadelphia Police Officer Douglas Culbreth – where Culbreth cited her involvement in Abu-Jamal’s trial. After White’s release, she skipped bail and has never, officially, been seen again.

At the 1997 PCRA hearing, the DA announced that Cynthia White was dead, and presented a death certificate for a “Cynthia Williams,” who died in New Jersey in 1992. However, Amnesty International reports, “an examination of the fingerprint records of White and Williams showed no match and the evidence that White is dead is far from conclusive.”

Journalist C. Clark Kissinger writes, a Philadelphia police detective “testified that the FBI had ‘authenticated’ that Williams had the same fingerprints as White.” However, Kissinger continues, “the DA’s office refused to produce the actual fingerprints,” and “the body of Williams was cremated so that no one could ever check the facts! Finally, the Ruth Ray listed on the death certificate as the mother of the deceased Cynthia Williams has given a sworn statement to the defense that she is not the mother of either Cynthia White or Cynthia Williams.” Dave Lindorff reports further that the listing of deaths by social security number for 1992 and later years does not include White’s number.

Gary Wakshul’s testimony blocked

On the final day of testimony during the original trial, Abu-Jamal’s lawyer discovered Police Officer Gary Wakshul’s official statement in the police report from the morning of Dec. 9, 1981. After riding with Abu-Jamal to the hospital and guarding him until treatment for his gunshot wound, Wakshul reported: “The negro male made no comment.” This statement contradicted the trial testimony of prosecution witnesses Gary Bell, a police officer, and Priscilla Durham, a hospital security guard, who testified that they had heard Abu-Jamal confess to the shooting while Abu-Jamal was awaiting treatment at the hospital.

When the defense immediately sought to call Wakshul as a witness, the DA reported that he was on vacation. Judge Sabo denied the defense request to locate him for testimony, on grounds that it was too late in the trial to even take a short recess so that the defense could attempt to locate Wakshul. Consequently, the jury never heard from Wakshul, nor about his contradictory written report. When an outraged Abu-Jamal protested, Judge Sabo replied: “You and your attorney goofed.”

Wakshul’s report from Dec. 9, 1981, is just one of the many reasons cited by Amnesty International for their conclusion that Bell’s and Durham’s trial testimonies were not credible. There are many other problems that merit a closer look if we are to determine how important Wakshul’s 1982 trial testimony could have been.

The alleged “hospital confession,” in which Abu-Jamal reportedly shouted, “I shot the motherf***er and I hope he dies,” was first officially reported to police over two months after the shooting, by hospital guards Priscilla Durham and James LeGrand on Feb. 9, 1982, by Police Officer Gary Wakshul on Feb. 11, by Officer Gary Bell on Feb. 25, and by Officer Thomas M. Bray on March 1. Of these five, only Bell and Durham were called as prosecution witnesses.

When Durham testified at the trial, she added something new to her story which she had not reported to the police on Feb. 9. She now claimed that she had reported the confession to her supervisor the next day, on Dec. 10, making a handwritten report. Neither her supervisor nor the alleged handwritten statement was ever presented in court. Instead, the DA sent an officer to the hospital, returning with a suspicious typed version of the alleged Dec. 10 report. Sabo accepted the unsigned and unauthenticated paper despite both Durham’s disavowal – because it was typed and not handwritten – and the defense’s protest that its authorship and authenticity were unproven.

Gary Bell, Faulkner’s partner and self-described “best friend,” testified that his two month memory lapse had resulted from his having been so upset over Faulkner’s death that he had forgotten to report it to police.

Later, at the 1995 PCRA hearings, Wakshul testified that both his contradictory report made on Dec. 9, 1981 – “The negro male made no comment” – and the two month delay were simply bad mistakes. He repeated his earlier statement given to police on Feb. 11, 1982, that he “didn’t realize it [Abu-Jamal's alleged confession] had any importance until that day.” Contradicting the DA’s assertion of Wakshul’s unavailability in 1982, Wakshul also testified in 1995 that he had in fact been home for his 1982 vacation and available for trial testimony, in accordance with explicit instructions to stay in town for the trial so that he could testify if called.

Just days before his PCRA testimony, undercover police officers savagely beat Wakshul in front of a sitting judge in the Common Pleas Courtroom where Wakshul worked as a court crier. The two attackers, Kenneth Fleming and Jean Langen, were later suspended without pay as punishment. With the motive still unexplained, Dave Lindorff and J. Patrick O’Connor speculate that the beating may have been used to intimidate Wakshul into maintaining his “confession” story at the PCRA hearings.

Regarding Abu-Jamal’s alleged confession, Amnesty International concluded: “The likelihood of two police officers and a security guard forgetting or neglecting to report the confession of a suspect in the killing of another police officer for more than two months strains credulity.”

Conclusion: The DA still wants to execute

“The urgent need for a civil rights investigation is heightened because the DA is still trying to execute Mumia,” emphasizes Dr. Suzanne Ross, an organizer of the campaign seeking an investigation. This past March, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Abu-Jamal’s appeal for a new guilt-phase trial, but the Court has yet to rule on whether to hear the appeal made simultaneously by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, which seeks to execute Abu-Jamal without granting him a new penalty-phase trial.

In March 2008, the Third Circuit Court affirmed Federal District Court Judge William Yohn’s 2001 decision “overturning” the death sentence. Citing the 1988 Mills v. Maryland precedent, Yohn had ruled that sentencing forms used by jurors and Judge Albert Sabo’s instructions to the jury were potentially confusing, and that therefore jurors could have mistakenly believed that they had to unanimously agree on any mitigating circumstances in order to consider them as weighing against a death sentence.

According to the 2001 ruling, affirmed in 2008, if the DA wants to re-instate the death sentence, the DA must call for a new penalty-phase jury trial. In such a penalty hearing, new evidence of Abu-Jamal’s innocence could be presented, but the jury could only choose between execution and a life sentence without parole.

The DA is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court against this 2008 affirmation of Yohn’s ruling. If the court rules in the DA’s favor, Abu-Jamal can be executed without benefit of a new sentencing hearing. If the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the DA’s appeal, the DA must either accept the life sentence for Abu-Jamal or call for the new sentencing hearing. Meanwhile, Mumia Abu-Jamal has never left his death row cell.
How you can help

Actions are being organized throughout the summer to support the campaign for a federal civil rights investigation, including at the upcoming NAACP convention in New York City, July 11-16. Organizers are focusing particularly on July 13, the day that Attorney General Holder will address the convention.

Supporters will then be in Washington, D.C., on July 22 to lobby their elected officials and, in mid-September, they’ll return to Washington, D.C., for a major press conference. For more information on how you can support the campaign for a federal civil rights investigation and to sign the online letter and petition to Attorney General Holder, visit http://freemumia.com/civilrights.html.

Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist (www.insubordination.blogspot.com) and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal (www.Abu-Jamal-News.com). Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bennett has been researching Abu-Jamal’s case for over 10 years and lived in Philadelphia for seven years, documenting the movement to free Mumia and all political prisoners from the frontlines of the struggle.

Michael Jackson "They Don't Care About Us" Prison Version video

June 26: The 5th Annual NYC Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice

On June 26, 2009, Trans and Gender Non Conforming People of Color and allies will take to the streets of NYC once again and demand justice to let the world know, that on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, the rebellion is not over and we will continue fighting for justice, raising our voices until we are heard. We call on all activist and organizers for justice, both local and organizations around the country and world to endorse this call to action and to build contingents to march in solidarity together. Below and attached are the points of unity which hold together the purpose of this march.

To endorse TDOA 2009, send an email to endorsetdoa@alp.org

For more info contact - info4tdoa@alp.org or Mya at 718-596-0342 x 23.

SAVE THE DATE – Trans Day of Action – June 26, 2009 – Starting Rally 3PM

The 5th Annual NYC Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice

POINTS OF UNITY

Initiated by TransJustice of the Audre Lorde Project, a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit, Trans and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color Center for Community Organizing.

We call on Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) communities and our allies from many movements to join us for the 5th Annual Trans Day of Action (TDOA) for Social and Economic Justice. As TGNC People of Color (POC) we recognize the importance of working together alongside other movements to build the world we want to see. Much has changed since last year’s TDOA, the election of a new US President has brought hope to many of our communities, however we still live in a time when people of color, immigrants, youth, elders, rural communities, people living with disabilities and poor people are disproportionately underserved, face higher levels of discrimination, heightened surveillance and experience increased violence at the hands of the state. In fact, due to the growing financial crisis conditions have worsened. As a result, it is even more critical that we unite and work together towards ending the transphobia, racism, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia and xenophobia within our movements for justice. We call for an end to the continued single issue platform of gay marriage over TGNC justice by our movements. Let’s come together to let the world know that TGNC justice will not be undermined and together we will not be silenced! These are the points of unity, which hold together the purpose of this march:

• We demand that all people receiving public assistance (welfare) including TGNC People of Color, be treated with respect and dignity. We are in solidarity with all people living on public assistance. TGNC POC face transphobic harassment and discrimination when applying for and seeking to access public assistance/welfare. For over three years TGNC communities in NYC have called on the Human Resources Administration (HRA), the NYC agency responsible for public assistance, to address these systemic problems. After initially ignoring requests for a meeting, due to community pressure raised by TDOA, last year HRA agreed to meet. As a result, this past year TransJustice and a committee of organizations and community members including the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Housing Works, Queers for Economic Justice, and others have worked with HRA to develop a new HRA procedure to prevent transphobic discrimination including TGNC cultural competency training. To date we are currently awaiting HRA’s final approval of the procedure and anticipate a response by Trans Day of Action.

• We demand an end to the profiling, discrimination, harassment, brutality and murders that occur at the hands of the Police. Communities of color continue to face rampant police harassment and brutality. Last month two lesbians of color were brutally beaten by police officers in front of a club in Brooklyn, NY. In 2006 a Transgender woman of color was assaulted and harassed by an employee at a McDonald’s, when the police arrived they arrested and abused her. We are in solidarity with all people impacted by police violence including supporters of Iman Morales, the family of Sean Bell and the Jersey 4. Like other oppressed communities, TGNC people are targeted, profiled and brutalized by the police daily. We demand an end to the brutality and harassment and call for Justice for all people impacted by police violence. We call for an independent prosecutor for all cases of police violence (www.peoplesjustice.org). To improve TGNC people’s safety in interactions with the police we demand that Commissioner Ray Kelly implement changes in NYPD policies and adopt the “Proposed Policy for the Treatment of Transgender People in NYPD Custody” and the associated changes to the NYPD patrol guide, submitted to the NYPD in April 2009. (www.ipetitions.com/petition/NYPDTransPolicy/)

• We demand an end to the violence and harassment faced by women and LGBTSTGNC communities in the NYC public transportation system (MTA). Women and LGBTSTGNC communities face rampant violence and harassment in the NYC public transportation system. In 2005, a woman was sexually assaulted in a subway station in full view of a train conductor and a station agent. In 2006, a transgender woman was harassed by an MTA worker using anti-transgender slurs - bystanders joined in the harassment. We call on the MTA to be accountable and work proactively to end the violence and harassment that occurs in their transit system and to comply with Local Law 3 which prohibits gender identity/expression discrimination. (nyersforsafetransit.wordpress.com & newyorklawschool.typepad.com/leonardlink/2008/02/brooklyn-court.html)

• We demand the full legalization of all immigrants. In the last year, violence towards immigrants has increased. We oppose all forms of enforcement, which target people trying to survive a deepening global economic crisis, and are in solidarity with migrant rights organizations around the world. We oppose any immigration reform proposal that includes a registration process, more militarization at the border and further criminalization of undocumented people. TGNC people deserve the right to access competent and respectful immigration services. We demand that the consulates of all countries respect and honor our identities and issue passports and other documentation that accurately reflects who we are.

• We are in solidarity with all prisoners, especially the many TGNC people behind the walls who are often invisible to our movements. We call attention to the under-reported accounts of severe violence and rape that our community faces at the hands of correction officers and other prisoners. We demand an end to the torture and discrimination TGNC prisoners face. We demand that all TGNC prisoners receive competent and respectful healthcare. We oppose the continued growth of the prison industrial complex that targets our communities, yet we recognize that TGNC people need access to services and facilities that lessen our vulnerability to violence within the present jails and prisons. We call attention to the criminal injustice system that increasingly puts POC, immigrants, TGNC and poor people behind bars - further criminalizing our communities and our lives.

• We demand that TGNC people have access to respectful and safe living spaces. Many TGNC people face discrimination from landlords and housing administrators displacing us from our homes due to gender identity or expression. A disproportionate number of TGNC people have been or are currently homeless and face discrimination when trying to access shelters and other assisted living programs. NYC law and the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) state that people will be placed in shelters according to gender identity and that discrimination based on gender identity will not be tolerated. We demand that all DHS shelter administrators continue to provide adequate Trans sensitivity trainings for all personnel and enforce clear non-discrimination policies that respect all homeless people.

• We demand that TGNC people have equal access to employment and education opportunities. We are outraged by increasing unemployment facing all communities, particularly TGNC POC. TGNC people continue to face blatant discrimination and harassment from employers due to systemic transphobia. Few TGNC people have access to opportunities for learning in a safe school environment. We demand that employers and educational institutions implement non-discrimination policies and comply with Local Law 3.

• We demand that all people, including TGNC people, have access to essential health and human services. We are in a period of ongoing budget cuts to critical services such as HIV/AIDS, youth, LGBT, etc. We call on Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg to stop the budget cuts to essential health and human services and restore funding. The Piers have been a safe space for our community, particularly LGBTSTGNC youth of color for years. In solidarity with FIERCE, we demand the establishment of a 24hour LGBT youth center at the Piers. (www.fiercenyc.org)

• We demand that children and youth under jurisdiction of the Administration of Children Services (ACS) and Private Foster Care Agencies, have the right to freedom of gender expression/identity. In 2002 it was established that NYC’s foster care system cannot discriminate against TGNC children and youth nor force them to only wear clothing associated with birth gender. ACS and private foster care agencies must be accountable for the health of people under their care including TGNC people. After organized community pressure ACS established an anti-discrimination policy for TGNC people. We demand that ACS fully implement this policy.

• We oppose all the public and hidden wars of the U.S. the continued occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the expansion of U.S. militarization. We are appalled by the ongoing attacks on the people of Palestine through the denial of equal rights inside Israel, division through the wall, economic isolation, blockades of supplies and imports, escalating militarization throughout the occupied territories, and the continued refusal of Palestinian refugees’ right of return. We support organizations intensifying efforts through boycott, divestment, and sanction strategies. We oppose escalating military activities everywhere. We demand the immediate removal of all U.S. troops from all countries under occupation and demand an end of use of U.S. dollars to cultivate and sponsor wars against people in the U.S. and abroad.

• We demand justice for the many TGNC people who have been beaten, assaulted, raped, and murdered. These incidents continue to be silenced, misclassified or blamed on TNGC people. The police and media continue to criminalize us even when we try to defend ourselves. An increase in hate crime laws will not solve the problem but will give increased power to the state to put more people in jail. Instead we call for a unified effort for all of us to address the root causes of why these incidents happen. As a society that seeks social justice we seek to find ways of preventing attacks on TGNC people by building strong and knowledgeable communities and using transformative justice to hold people accountable.

We commemorate Amanda Milan, Sakia Gunn, Ruby Ordeñana, Gwen Araujo, Erika Keels, Victoria Arellano, Lawrence King, Saneesha Stewart, Duanna Johnson, Angie Zapata, Teish Cannon, Taysia Elzy and the many others we have lost, who struggled and lived fearlessly, being true to who they were. They keep the fire of struggle burning within all of us.

On June 26, 2009, TGNC POC and allies will take to the streets of NYC once again and demand justice to let the world know, that on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, the rebellion is not over and we will continue fighting for justice, raising our voices until we are heard. We call on all activist and organizers for justice, both local and organizations around the country to endorse this call to action and to build contingents to march in solidarity together. To endorse TDOA 2009, send an email to endorsetdoa@alp.org, for more info contact - info4tdoa@alp.org or Mya at 718-596-0342 x 23.